DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
DURHAM, N. C. 


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The Methovist Pulptt 


THE ROYALTY OF JESUS 


Jidrwal Kaeo 


THE ROYALTY 
OF JESUS 


, By 


NAPHTALI LUCCOCK, D.D. 


PASTOR UNION METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
ST. LOUIS, MO. 


138862 


CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 


SERMON 


. THE RovALtTy oF JESUS, - - - 


III. 


<4 


VIII. 


CONTENTS 


. THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST, - - 


THE POWER OF A SURRENDERED 
Ee = UF - = = = 


. “THE Face oF JESus CHRIST,” - 
. “THE Brook IN THE WaAy,” . 


. THE GOSPEL FOR AN OPULENT 


CIVILIZATION, - : x . 


. THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED, - 


THE SonG oF MOSES AND OF THE 
Meter ere as ee 


PAGE 


141 


fey 


= 
-" 
he 


ft, 
THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
“Behold your King.”—Joun x1x, 14. 


THESE are the words of Pilate as he presented to 
the multitude the Man of Galilee, wearing the pur- 
ple robe and the crown of thorns. Pilate is one of 
the most tragic, yet pathetic, figures of history. 
He saw his duty with sunlit clearness, and was 
stirred by a mighty impulse to do it at any Cost. 
For a moment the glory of Rome sits upon his brow 
like a halo. Man is superb in battle; never more 
so than when the champion of the innocent and 
oppressed against the clamors of a mob and the 
malignant forces of evil. On those lonely moral 
heights of personal choice, where every one must 
win or lose his soul, Pilate wavered. ‘The glamour 
of this present world threw its spell upon him. He 
hesitated; he began to trifle with duty, to evade, to 
shuffle, and to compromise. Every device quickly 
failed. Slowly the coils of destiny tightened about 

9 


10 Tur RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


him, until, forced to a decision, he surrendered his 
imperative conviction, rejected the light within, and 
did that deed of shame that has made his name 
infamous. Had Pilate received a flashing premo- 
nition of that record that will stand to the end of 
time, “Born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under 
Pontius Pilate,” think you he would have been 
braced and girded even to a heroic death in defense 
of Jesus? Certainly not. Heaven’s supreme em- 
phasis is the clear conviction of right or wrong. 
It can do no more for any one than to make him 
see and feel that conviction mightily. The light 
within is as sure to the soul that will heed it as the 
touch of the polar star upon the magnetic needle, 
holding the path of truth and duty. If one reject 
it, no other sign will be given; he will go, like Pilate, 
unarrested to judgment and to shame. This is the 
dark warning of Pilate’s act; in the crisis of moral 
choice, any compromise with wrong, however veiled 
or specious in the beginning, ends at last in a full 
surrender to evil and in crucifying Christ Himself. 

Thrice Pilate pays tribute to the moral majesty 
of Jesus,—once in his judicial declaration that he 
found no fault in Him; once in his dramatic con- 
fession, when, washing his hands before the mul- 
titude, he declared, “I am innocent of the blood of 


ad | ‘ue 
ba 


THe RoyaLty oF JEsus. II 


this just person ;” and in the scene before us, where, 
in bitter scorn of the Jews, he proclaims Him a 
King. 

In that hour there was a strange contrast 
between the lone and friendless One, robed and 
crowned in hollow mockery, and the majesty of 
Tiberius Cesar on the throne of the world; more 
wonderful still is the contrast we behold between 
the humiliation of Jesus in Pilate’s hall and the 
Royalty of Jesus as it steadily unfolds through the 
centuries, extending its spiritual dominion over all 
lands and beyond all seas. Let us trace some of the 
evidences of this royalty, and behold our King. 

I. Jesus reigns by the Force of Spiritual Reali- 
ties. 

Often this old world has been stirred by spir- 
itual impulses as the mighty sea is lifted into tidal 
waves. And these impulses make history; for 
humanity only rises to its best under the sway of 
strong moral convictions. The Crusades were such 
a stirring and lifting of humanity, and out of them 
came the destruction of feudalism and the dawn of 
the Modern Era. The planting of the dominant 
civilization in this Western Hemisphere was due 
to a spiritual impact. The Pilgrim Fathers, like 
Israel in Egypt, were driven into the wilderness by 


12 Tue RoyaLty OF JESUS. - 


a moral conviction. It was spiritual freedom they 
sought, first of all. 

Now, in all great movements of history towards 
truth, righteousness, and liberty, Christ lives and 
reigns. His Gospel is steadily destroying all false 
philosophy, and is emancipating, stimulating, and 
energizing the human, mind to every form of noble 
achievement. Human history, it has been happily 
said, can be summed up in four letters: B, C, and 
A, D. The ruling ideas of the modern world are 
to be traced directly to Jesus of Nazareth. His 
teachings are constructive; they do not leave things 
as they are, but reconstruct them into a higher and 
diviner order. 

How fascinating the play of constructive forces 
in the story of human progress! When Columbus 
discovered America, he reconstructed the science 
of Geography. When Newton announced the prin- 
ciple of gravitation, he reconstructed the science of 
Astronomy. ‘The Gospel of Jesus, however, with 
its new vision of God; with its sense of the worth 
of man as a spiritual personality ; with its new ideas 
of righteousness, love, and service; with its spirit- 
ual dynamic,—is steadily reconstructing the world. 
It is making all things new in human life,—religion, 
politics, commerce, industry, education, art, litera- 


THE Royatty oF Jesus. 13 


ture, social life, and service; in fact, the whole realm 
of human interest and activity. 

The influence of Jesus is the most potent force 
in the world to-day, and is active in all lands. It 
is giving to pagan nations the boon of freedom, of 
power, and of progress; it is softening the barbar- 
isms of the world’s legislation ; abolishing its cruel 
slaveries, its private duels, its aggressive wars, its 
loose divorces, its murderous dramshops; it is en- 
nobling jurisprudence, establishing courts of arbi- 
tration, maintaining rights of person, of home, of 
property, of labor, of trade, of conscience, of man- 
hood. Jesus of Nazareth is steadily marshaling 
human powers, disclosing human potentialities, | 
transforming human characters. He is the center 
and master of the spiritual forces that move the 
world, and will never be dethroned. There is a 
Norse legend that one of the gods of the old myth- 
ology challenged a stranger to run a foot-race. The 
god was defeated in the race. The stranger’s name 
was Human Thought. True enough, human 
thought has outrun the old mythologies and the old 
religions. Brahmanism, for instance, can not en- 
dure the test of true physical science. Mohammed- 
anism, that shot its crescent across the sky like a 
flaming meteor, and conquered, in one century, a 


a eas Ye tocats ee 4 


14 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


wider scope of territory than the Roman legions 
subdued in twelve centuries, halts and disintegrates 
before a sound political philosophy. But human 
thought will never outrun Jesus of Nazareth. He 
is from above. Sometimes, in your evening walk, 
when you look ahead to the rising ground, where 
the city street straggles out into the country, in the 
gathering darkness, you can scarcely distinguish 
the street-lights from the stars; but on your near 
approach the stars mount to their native heavens 
and look down upon you, clear, shining, and serene. 
It is so with the Gospel of Jesus; however high the 
conceptions of men may rise, the teachings of Jesus 
are infinitely beyond them, like the unfailing stars. 

Yes, as the old indictment ran, “There is another 
King, one Jesus,” and in Him is the hope of the 
race. Apart from Him, the dreams of philosophers 
and poets of an ideal human state of justice, peace, 
and love, vanish like mist. Apart from Him, the 
rallying-cry of human progress, “Liberty, equality, 
and fraternity,” is false and empty. But in Him 
the goal of the race will be realized, the most 
glorious hopes of the human heart fulfilled. 

“These things shall be: A loftier race 

Than e’er the world hath known shall rise, 


With flame of freedom in their souls, 
And light of knowledge in their eyes. 


Tue Royalty oF JESUS. 15 


New arts shall bloom of loftier mold, 
And loftier music thrill the skies, 
And every life shall be a song, 
When all the earth is Paradise.” 

II. Jesus reigns because He is the True Bond 
of Unity between the Nations. 

Long ago, the grand old schoolmaster, Socrates, 
in a moment of enthusiasm, catching the true heart- 
throb of humanity, announced himself as a citizen 
of the world, anticipating the Roman who ex- 
claimed, “I also am a man, and nothing human is 
foreign to me.” ‘The lonely apostle, standing on 
Mars’ Hill, proclaimed the great truth toward which 
the Greek and the Roman aspired: “He hath made 
of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all 
the face of the earth.”' The unity of the human 
face in a great fellowship, wherein the various 
nations shall co-operate in mutual sympathy and 
service for the good of all and each, according to 
the gift of each, is 

“One far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves.” 

Hugh Miller used to recognize the footprints of 
a Creator in the record of the rocks; but we may 
go even farther, and feel the heart-throbs of a 
Father in the distributed bounty of Nature. There 
is a hint of the Gospel in Geography; a revelation, 


16 THE Royaty oF JEsus. 


in some degree, of the Divine purpose of “peace 
and good will” toward the race. God has made 
the very ends of the earth mutually dependent upon 
each other for their full development. ‘Take an 
inventory of yourself, of the things ministering to 
your comfort, and you will discover that you are 
a citizen of the world in a most surprising sense. 
One country contributes the cotton of your ward- 
robe; another, the silk; another, the linen; your 
table bears the rich fruit and products of all suns 
and climes. Now, if you could catch glimpses of 
the vast company of human beings who serve you, 
preparing these products and passing them on to 
you: the toilers in the fields and mines, the work- 
men in factories and shops, the merchants in stores 
and offices, the army of transportation on land and 
sea,—in such a vision you would discover yourself 
bound by the most subtle bonds to the millions of 
earth. The very flowers of the field signal this 
gracious fellowship. Our Lord once made the lily 
of Galilee speak of the Divine care of life. Enter 
now into Shaw’s Garden, or into the Phipps Con- 
servatory, and read the language and gospel of the 
flowers. There all nations meet and exchange gifts 
and courtesies. The jessamine is there, bringing 
the beauty and good will of far-away India, the 


7 


Tue RoyaLty OF JESUS. 17 


heliotrope from Peru, the dahlia from Mexico, the 
tulip from Turkey, the carnation from Italy,—in 
fact, the flowers of all lands join in the shining 
prophecy of a coming human fellowship. ‘They 
shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into 
it.” Into the Kingdom of God and Man, into the 
world-wide fellowship of love and service, all 
nations shall enter, bringing their distinct treasures 
of hand and mind and heart. The flowers have 
already arrived, and every other gift is on the 
way. 

There is a hint of the Gospel also in Commerce. 
Far be it from me to suggest that there is a saving 
principle in commerce to prevent all wars and pre- 
serve the peace of the world. Often commerce 
separates rather than unites, and precipitates sharp 
collisions; yet there is a beneficent potency in the 
heart of commerce. Co-operation is the to-morrow 
of competition. These rasping commercial disor- 
ders among the nations of the earth but indicate 
the tuning of an orchestra which will, in due time, 
pour forth the grand oratorio of peace and good 
will. God is teaching us that the nations are not 
always to stand apart, like angry pools, but are to 
be connected rather, like a chain of lakes, nourish- 
ing and sustaining each other. Commerce fore- 


2 


18 THE Royalty oF JESUS. 


shadows a beneficent purpose in human history. It 
is breaking up the isolation of nations; it is sustain- 
ing, by railways, through canals and on ocean path- 
ways, a current of communication and exchange 
between all lands; it is exerting a restraining hand 
upon national prejudices, and upholds the balance 
and poise of human interest. a. 

There is a hint and prophecy of the Gospel in 
Science. Pasteur makes a great discovery in his 
laboratory, and in a short time its beneficent light 
and healing are felt throughout the world. A 
great practical invention, like the steam-engine or 
the telegraph, is not a local affair, but a planetary 
boon. 

The same holds true of Literature and Art. A 
great book, or a great picture, speaks not to a single 
nation, but to the heart of the world. Occasionally 
we hear one say of this nation or that, “It is suffi- 
cient within itself.” God never made a nation 
sufficient within itself for all things. In the matter 
of mere physical existence, it may be independent; 
but for all higher development it is widely depend- 
ent. ‘Without Shakespeare, Wagner, and Ra- 
" phael,” said one of the wealthiest men of the 
world, “my life would be poverty-stricken.” God 
has made His gifts of genius to the race a form 


Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 19 


of large human ministry and a bond of unity by 
widely distributing them in time and place. Hu- 
manity is like the sea: on the surface it breaks into 
nations as into waves, but in its hidden depths it 
is one, and moves to the universal note, however 
and wherever struck. 

Even in political aspirations, upheavals, and 
revolutions, we discover this prophetic note of 
larger fellowship. When Alexander the Great 
marched toward the conquest of the world he was 
inspired by a dream of the unity of the race. When 
Czsar reduced the nations of Europe to a common 
political level, and introduced one law and order 
for the known world, he aimed at fulfilling human 
destiny. But these attempts at universal authority 
and dominion failed. They lacked the true organ- 
izing principle and a sufficient dynamic. Guizot 
declares, in his “History of Civilization,’ that 
ancient civilizations failed because they were domi- 
nated by a simple interest, and that modern civiliza- 
tion endures because of varied interests. The 
generalization misses the mark. The stability and 
power of progressive civilization is not found in the 
poise and balance of various interests, but in the 
growing dominion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pente- 
cost dates a new era in human history. In the new 


20 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


vision and new life of that day is to be found the 
fountain-head of all that is great and enduring in 
our modern world. Z 

The gifts of civilization come to us through the 
pierced hands of our ascended Lord, and from 
the impact of His spirit on the race. Once Cole-- 
ridge blew a thistle-down from his hand, and re- 
marked, “The tendency of that thistle-down is 
toward China, but it will never arrive; the grip of 
the earth is too strong upon it.” There are many 
forms of human culture and endeavor having noble 
tendencies toward the ideal order, science, art, 
literature, commerce, government; but they will 
never arrive; the grip of human selfishness and sin 
is too strong for them. In the Gospel of Jesus 
alone is there power strong enough to overcome 
all arresting and disintegrating forces. Pentecost 
was a signal that our Lord had arrived and taken 
possession of His own, that all power had been 
given unto Him in heaven and in earth. Pentecost 
was a prophecy, also, that humanity, in due time, 
would arrive at its appointed goal, and become a 
true kingdom of God on earth. When our Lord 
said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” 
He by no means meant that it had nothing to do 
with the things of this world, but that its authority 


Tur Royalty oF JESUS. 21 


and dynamics were from above; and that it would 
deal with all in a new and spiritual way. 

There is a unity of a watch in which all of its 
various parts are riveted together. Such was the 
Roman Empire, a finely articulated system held 
together by magistrates and armies. ‘There is a 
unity of the solar system in which the planets re- 
volve around a common center and in mutual har- 
mony. Such is the kingdom of God, a free move- 
ment of human life under the law of love. Its 
highest bond of unity is not something without, a 
creed or an organization, but rather something 
within, the mind and spirit of Christ our Lord. 

Ill. Jesus reigns in the Steady Aspirations of 
the Race. 

The world is coming to apprehend with increas- 
ing clearness that the hope of the race is in Jesus 
Christ and in His Gospel of love and life. Human 
progress has always been directed by some dominant 
personality. We sum up an age or an era in a man. 
We can not think of Rome apart from Cesar; we 
can not think of England apart from Cromwell. 
That plain farmer from the Fen country laid broad 
the foundations of constitutional liberty throughout 
the world. You have seen the Declaration of 
Independence so written that the features of Wash- 


22 THE RoyALty OF JESUS. 


ington are plainly visible in it; his personality was- 
one of the dominant forces in determining the 
character of the Republic. Well, slowly, but cer- 
tainly, civilization is taking on the character and 
spirit of Jesus Christ. In that early morning Pilate 
uttered another prophecy: “Behold the man.” 
Steadily through the ages the new type of humanity 
is being realized—the new man in Christ Jesus and 
the new man is slowly, but surely, making a new 
world. With every generation the Kingship of 
Jesus Christ, the impact of His spirit in human 
affairs throughout the world, become more distinct. 
Humanity is increasingly stirred and swayed by 
His personality and the power of His Gospel. One 
of the most interesting views on the continent, to 
me, is that of the rapids above Niagara Falls. The 
waters seem so jubilant, they run so swiftly, and ~ 
sing and flash with joy before they leap the mighty 
barrier that shuts them from the sea. So through- 
out the world, the signs increase that Christianity 
is gathering and marshaling for some great forward 
movement, in which separating barriers will be 
forever past. Many things indicate this: the inter- 
national touch, the arrow-flight of commerce, the 
break-up of heathenism, the ferment of the nations, 
the deep hunger of the spirit for health and hope 


Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 23 


and life. The waters are strangely stirred; not an 
angel, but the King Himself draws near. 

I am not oblivious to the discordant elements 
in human affairs; but Christ is on the throne. The 
very tumults of men will but hasten the glorious 
consummation. Sometimes we feel the shock of 
political and social earthquakes; upheavals reveal- 
ing the primitive rock upon which society has 
always rested ; socialistic upheavals, arraying capital 
and labor in irreconcilable conflict, like oxygen and 
fire; Nihilistic upheavals, the wild presage of a 
universal deluge which would blot out at once the 
family, the school, the Church, and all religion and 
civilization. But there is no need of alarm: these 
things are but incidental to all true world building. 
Fortified iniquities and age-long tyrannies must 
occasionally be blasted away, that a better era may 
be ushered in. They say that the Bay of Naples, 
one of the most beautiful sheets of water on the 
earth, is the cup of an extinct volcano. At last 
the internal fires died down, the glowing lava ceased 
to flow, clouds rolled back, and, lo! the blue Medi- 
terranean Sea had covered the black, cavernous 
depths with its own bosom, and the placid waters 
reflected all the splendors of the heavens. It will 
be so with human civilization. Always across the 


24 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 


storm and through the darkest night there is an 
assuring voice: “Let not your heart be troubled; 
ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” Christ is 
on the throne. 

IV. Jesus reigns enthroned in the Hearts of His 
Followers. 

“Just a little deeper, Doctor, and you will find 
the emperor,’ remarked a French soldier to a 
surgeon who was probing his wound. What a 
striking expression of loyalty,—another enthroned 
within, exercising full and unchallenged dominion 
over the life! The incident will give insight into 
the noble expression of St. Paul: “I am crucified 
with Christ; nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me.” What a strange paradox, 
Christ living and reigning within, yet the man 
himself living a truer, wider, and more potent life 
than ever before! Yet in this paradox we find the 
wondrous secret of the kingdom of God. St Paul’s 
great confession implies absolute faith in Jesus 
Christ as King and Lord. It implies perfect loyalty 
to Him throughout all the ranges of one’s being; 
it implies complete identification with Him in will, 
purpose, and desire; it implies constant spiritual 
apprehension of Him in the fullness of His love 
and grace and power. 


Tue Royatty oF Jesus. 25 


This is true Christianity, and nothing less can 
be. “If a man have not the spirit of Christ, he is 
none of His.” One of the most significant facts 
of history is St. Paul’s transfer of loyalty from 
himself and from the world to Jesus Christ as King 
and Lord. He did it there under the searching light 
of the Damascene way, in that sublime choice, 
“Lord, what wilt Thou have me do?” From that 
hour his life became new in spirit, in aim, in pur- 
pose. How immensely his spiritual personality, 
Christ living in him, has told upon this world! 
It was apparent at once in Antioch. ‘The disciples, 
we read, “were called Christians first in Antioch.” 
This is most significant; in that wicked and disso- 
lute city where the vices of civilization and barbar- 
ism met, the new type of character was first dis- 
tinctly recognized and named. Purity, righteous- 
ness, and love were so apparent in the lives of 
these men and women that they said, “They re- 
produce the spirit and life of their Master: they are 
Christians.” Now, St. Paul was one of the leading 
spirits of this Church at Antioch. His pure, true 
life, his clear testimony, and his ageressive zeal 
were first recognized there. And so the new type 
of character began to appear everywhere; in the 
army, in Cities, in villages, men and women, who 


26 THE Royatty oF JESUS. 


lived in vital union with Jesus Christ as King and 
Lord, and who brought all things in life to the 
test of His approval, and the glorious company of 
witnesses, have been constantly increasing through 
the centuries. 

The question arises, is this a possible or a prac- 
tical ideal of life in this world? Well, it is not 
an easy one, not a popular one; but is both possible 
and practical. On occasion it may involve the 
sharpest collisions. “These that have turned the 
world upside-down are come hither.” At times, 
the truth as it is in Jesus is more explosive than 
dynamite, more lifting than an earthquake. It 
was supreme loyalty to Jesus as King and Lord 
that disintegrated the Roman Empire, broke up 
feudalism, and launched the Mayfower, and that 
is still impelling humanity forward and upward. 
The Christian spirit is not destructive, but con- 
structive, in human society. Christ came into the 
world, not to destroy politics, business or social life, 
but to purify and regulate them. The very genius 
of Christianity is in the apostle’s words, “We ought 
to obey God rather than man.” Life’s true im- 
perative is ethical and spiritual. Through free in- 
telligence, an enlightened conscience, a righteous 
will, and a heart aglow with love, Christ lives and 
reigns in human affairs. 


THe Royalty oF JESUS. 27 


The earth has a twofold motion,—one on its 
own axis, and another in a celestial orbit around 
the sun. Only as it is loyal to both motions does 
it attain its singing harmony, its fruitfulness, and 
radiant beauty. It is so with human life: it requires 
an earthly motion, turning on its own axis, amid 
daily activities and enterprises; but it requires also 
a celestial orbit around a heavenly center, to attain 
its fullness of blessedness and joy. Now, the reign 
of Christ brings human life into heavenly relations 
and into heavenly places; He lifts the soul and 
all that. concerns it, into the great orbit of right- 
eousness and love, and thus the kingdom of God 
is fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven. Prophets 
and apostles have discerned from afar the glory of 
the victorious King. “He shall have dominion 
from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends 
of the earth.” 

“The Kingdoms of this world have become the 
kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He 
shall reign for ever and ever.” 

“Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reign- 
eth!” 

“BEHOLD youR Kine!” 


1 
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 


“And of His fullness have all we received, and 
grace for grace.’ —JOHN I, 16. 


SomE years ago, at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, 
a student entered the room of the saintly Dr. Nevin 
and found him bowing in tears over his Bible. 
“Here is a passage,’ said the devout scholar, as 
he turned to the student, “which has been, in a 
good measure, sealed to me for years, but my God 
has graciously opened it to me in this hour.” I 
am sure many of us feel that the prologue of St. 
John’s Gospel is, in a good measure, sealed to us. 
We can not follow the eagle flight of the apostle’s 
thought. But occasionally God opens unto us 
glimpses of its wonderful vistas of grace and mercy. 

“Of His fullness have we all received.” “His 
fullness,’ who can measure that? We know some- 
thing of the bounty of the earth, nourishing the 
teeming millions of living creatures that have moved 


upon it through countless generations. We know 
28 


THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 29 


something of the tireless and tumultuous sea, for 
unknown ages pouring its solemn music in un- 
broken cadence around the world. We know some- 
thing of the exhaustless treasure of the sun, flood- 
ing the world, through ages upon ages, with warmth 
_and beauty and the potency of multitudinous life. 
But back of the earth and sea, back of the flaming 
light of stars and suns, is He who gave to all 
visible things existence and form. Creation itself 
is but a flashing symbol of His treasure, whose 
fullness “filleth all in all.” “All things were made 
by Him, and without Him was not anything made 
that was made.” “Lo, these are parts of His ways; 
but the thunder of His power, who can under- 
stand?’ He is able to do exceeding abundantly 
above all that we can ask or think.” 

And that radiant phrase, “grace for grace!” 
What treasure it implies of knowledge, of growth, 
of power! At first the expression seems far away 
and elusive, too much the language of rapture for 
our commonplace human life. Grace for sin we 
can understand: “Let the wicked forsake his way, 
and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him 
return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon 
him, and unto our God, for He will abundantly 
pardon.” Grace for human need is quite within 


30 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


our horizon: “My God shall supply all your needs 
according to the riches of grace in Christ Jesus ;” 
grace for death, we can appreciate: “Yea, though 
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod 
and Thy staff, they comfort me;” but “grace for 
grace” leads us into a wider orbit and into growing 
realms of blessedness and joy. “O, the depth of the 
riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” 

Possibly, as we meditate, the fire may burn 
within us, and the sealed Word may open to the 
brooding heart like a morning-glory to the sun, or 
like the bush which Moses saw suddenly become 
aflame with the glory of God. 

I. Through Jesus Christ the Soul rises into the 
Victorious and Triumphant Life. 

Human nature is stirred by at least four great, 
masterful passions,—the passion to possess, the 
passion to rule, the passion to know, and the passion 
to be. The last, the passion to be, I am persuaded, 
is the deepest, the most imperative, the sublimest 
passion of the soul. True, we may awake to it 
late enough, but it is always there at the inmost 
center cf our being, that eternal human quest, that 
undying hunger and thirst after righteousness. It 
is the soul’s true recognition of itself 


Tue FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 31 


The play of these master passions in human 
hearts and in human history is “one touch of nature 
that makes the whole world kin.’ 
story of Eden is neither strange nor far away. 


b 


To possess: that 


The forbidden fruit; how near it is, how good and 
desirable it seems, how full and fair of promise! 
“And I did eat;” daily the tragedy of clamorous, 
overwhelming appetite is played out around us to 
the last act of sin and shame. Who has not heard 
the gates of some fair Eden close in the wake of 
disobedience? To rule: it was the passion for do- 
minion that led the hosts of Alexander into the 
heart of the East, that drove Czsar’s thundering ~ 
legions beyond the Alps, that, under Napoleon, 
threw all Europe into the mad dance of death. 
To know: the passion for knowledge pushed the 
ships of Columbus over the Western sea, and 
steadily thrusts expeditions into the frozen North 
to wrest the secret of the earth from the mighty 
bulwarks of ice and snow. ‘To be: the passion to 
be, to overtake one’s ideal of excellence, to realize 
one’s noblest thought and aim, reveals at once the 
glory and the pathos of human nature. Our likeness 
to God and our immeasurable distance from Him is 
the secret of our deepest woe, and the spring of our 
highest endeavor. It was the passion to be that 


32 Tue Royalty oF JESUS. 


kindled the altar-fires of religion, and built the tem- 
ples of faith that mount heavenward in minaret and 
spire and dome. Man, it has been said, is haunted 
by the ideal. This witness is true, for “there is a 
light that enlighteneth every one that cometh into 
the world.” No matter how far he may go astray, 
the light never altogether dies out. Byron exclaims, 


“Ours is a false nature, 
*T is not in the harmony of things.” 


Where did he learn that but from his own heart? 
Browning’s lines also suggest life’s true impera- 
tive,— 


“To man propose this test; thy body at its best, 
How far can it project thy soul on its lone way?” 


And Shelley bears witness also,— 


“Nature, in silent eloquence, proclaims 
That all her works fulfill the law of love,— 
All save the outcast, man.” 


“The outcast, man,’—is not that an echo of a 
troubled soul? 

Tennyson, in the prayer of one of his characters, 
voices the wail of St. Paul,— 


“OQ for a man to arise in me 
That the man I am might cease to be!” 


THE FULLNESS oF CHRISt. 33 


“O, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death?” It is only when one 
has a vision of true selfhood, and seeks to rise to 
it, that the grip of evil within him, his impotence 
and wretchedness, fully appear. “To will is indeed 
present with me,”—the ideal clear, distinct, impera- 
tive and approved,—“but how to perform I know 


? 


not.” And yet how imperative is the moral ideal? 
That pilgrim there in India, measuring with his own 
body the entire distance to the sacred city of Ben- 
ares, a thousand miles or more, falling full length 
on the highway, hour after hour and day after day, 
is seeking the moral ideal. But he will not find 
peace at Benares. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
“the consummate flower of Stoicism,” seeking to 
live there in the palace the royal life of the spirit, 
and writing his brave and immortal thoughts, recog- 
nized the worth of the moral ideal, and agonized 
toward it, but did not fully attain it. It is said that 
Mr. Franklin, under the pressure of the moral ideal, 
resolved to overtake it and wrote on a new card the 
names of the virtues, and checked his moral defi- 
ciencies by punching a hole opposite the appropriate 
virtue. After a few months he found the white 
card full of holes, and threw it away in disgust. 
“How to perform I know not.’”’ Such is universal 
3 


34 Tue RovaLty oF JEsus. 


experience. But is there no hope? Is man to be 
forever defeated in his highest aspirations? There 
is hope, but only through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
The secret of the victorious life is not in education, 
not in legislation, not in painful discipline, not in 
a new environment, helpful as these may be, but in 
anew heart. “Ye are saved by grace, through faith, 
and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” 
“What the law could not do”—any sort of law— 
“in that it was weak, God, sending His Son in the 
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin 
in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might 
be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but 
after the Spirit.” “Thanks be unto God who giveth 
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “To 
as many as received Him, to them gave He power 
to become the sons of God.” What an amazing 
statement !—“‘power to become the sons of God.” 
Human progress is always a process of receiving. 
Sunlight, passing through. empty space, neither 
lights nor warms it. Only the rays received, or, in 
other words, intercepted, give up their treasure. 
Steam has been a fact ever since heat was applied 
to water, but it was only when the mind of Watt 
received, intercepted the significance of the fact, that 
it became potent in the world. The electric current 


THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 35 


has passed around the earth since Creation’s morn- 
ing, but it was only yesterday that the mind of man 
received, intercepted, and utilized the marvelous 
power. It is so with Christ: it is only as He is 
received, intercepted, appropriated, that He becomes 
the power of God unto salvation and all spiritual 
triumph. 

To many, Christ is but a man, a teacher, an 
example, an ideal. They do not receive His potency. 
There is no intercepting faith to make light and 
healing possible. “The light shineth in the darkness, 
and the darkness comprehended it not.’ When the 
broken-hearted father cried out in agony for his 
child, “If Thou canst do anything for us, have 
mercy on us and help us,” and Christ made answer, 
“If thou canst believe’—intercept, appropriate—to 
such an one all things are possible. Such is His 
answer to every soul; according to your faith, your 
power to receive, so be it unto you. How we limit 
the Holy One! It is a weakness of the best of men. 
Turn now to the Book of Numbers, and read the 
story of the giving of the quails in the wilderness. 
God said to Moses that he would give flesh to the 
people for a whole month. At that amazing prom- 
ise Moses apparently lifts his hands in protest, as 
though God had, in an unguarded moment, spoken 


36 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 


hastily and beyond His power to perform. “The 
people among whom I am are six hundred thousand, 
and Thou hast said, I will give them flesh to eat 
for a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds 
be slain for them?” One can almost hear God laugh 
as He answers: “Is the Lord’s hand waxed short? 
Thou shalt see, now, whether My word shall come 
to pass unto thee or not.” “And there went forth 
a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the 
sea, and let them fall by the camp, a day’s journey 
on this side the camp and a day’s journey on the 
other side of the camp, and two cubits high, upon 
the face of the earth.” Doubtless, as Moses stood 
there surrounded by a wall of fluttering wings and 
looked into the living sea of God’s bounty, he was 
ashamed of his unbelief, and all doubt of the Divine 
power and Divine faithfulness fled away forever. 
May the vision of the Divine fullness and the Divine 
faithfulness be ours! God’s word always comes to 
pass to receiving, intercepting faith. He meets the 
greatest emergency in human life or experience 
promptly, and, if need be, overwhelmingly. We 
continually limit Him, however, in His dealing with 
us, by doubting His word and “the riches of grace 
in Christ Jesus.” 

True, it is written, “He is able to make all grace 


hal Ns de Bae 


THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 37 


abound toward you.” Now, we readily believe that 
Abraham on Mt. Moriah might receive such a prom- 
ise, or that St. Paul in the third heavens might ap- 
propriate it; but we imagine that the special and 
exceptional conditions of our particular cases take 
us quite out of its range. But the promise is to 
you. “The promises of God are yea and amen, in 
Christ Jesus.” “It pleased the Father that in Him 
should all fullness dwell.” Gravitation acts in every 
place impartially : so through Jesus Christ, our risen 
Lord, all the fullness of God, His wisdom, His 
power, His love, come into action at any point of 
time, or space, or need, or degree. The secret of 
the higher life, of the abundant life, is in the ap- 
prehension of the fullness of Christ, and an appro- 
priation of it through instant and intercepting faith. 

Franklin, by means of his kite and key, made a 
simple connection with the heavens. One suggested 
recently, as a dream, that possibly, from the highest 
mountains of earth, a magnet might be discharged 
upward in space until it penetrated an electric ocean, 
_ and, being held there suspended, the earth might 
be brought in touch with exhaustless treasure. A 
mere fancy, perhaps; but in the realm of the spirit 
the dream has become a reality. The highest 
heavens have been entered by One who abides there 


38 THE Roya.ty OF JESUS. 


forever, and through whom the human need of earth 
has been brought in touch with exhaustless grace 
and power. “He hath ascended up on high; He 
hath obtained gifts for men.” Pentecost was the 
signal that our Jesus had arrived at the right hand 
of the Majesty on high, and had entered into posses- 
sion and administration of all the resources of God 
in our behalf. ; 

John has a way of vitalizing his record with 
living experience. After writing in his Epistle, 
“Behold what manner of love the Father hath be- 
stowed upon us, that we should be called the sons 
- of God,” he broke out in jubilant testimony, “And 
we are;” so, in the words of our meditation, he 
records the testimony and experience of the com- 
pany among whom he dwells, and we also may 
share that experience. “Of His fullness have all 
we received, and grace for grace.” 

II. In Christ Jesus the Christian Character 
attains Symmetrical Development. 

A few years ago, Henry 


” 


“And grace for grace. 
Drummond wrote a stimulating and helpful book on 
“The Greatest Thing in the World—Love.” A 
book equally stimulating and helpful might be 
written on “The Rarest Thing in the World— 
Poise.” We speak of “all-around men,” and Ten- 


Tue FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 39 


nyson sings of the Iron Duke as “one who stood 
four-square to all the winds that blow.” Well, it 
is only as we draw largely upon our imagination 
and affections that we can speak so of any one. 
Most people are like the leaning tower of Pisa, 
somewhat inclined in one fashion or another from 
a true perpendicular, or, at least, like Giotto’s Tower 
in Florence, unfinished, still lacking a crowning 
grace. God has implanted deep within us something 
of His own sense of order, of harmony, of beauty, 
of perfection. We can not rest content in anything 
partial or incomplete. When Charles Lamb re- 
marked of Coleridge that he was “an archangel 
slightly damaged,” he was under the mark, for 
human nature bears the Divine image; Divine ideals 
are its standards, and the beauty of holiness its goal. 
“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which 
is in heaven is perfect.” Christian perfection is not 
one of formal obedience to ruled points, like that 
of the Pharisee, but, like that of the Father, a per- 
fection of love, a Christ-filled life, flowing out into 
all goodness, all beauty, all service. “Therefore, 
leaving the principles of the doctrines of Christ, let 
us go on unto perfection.” The beauty of holiness 
is not simply a culture through knowledge merely ; 
it is something more than self-mastery, attained 


40 THE Royatty oF JESUS. 


through painful discipline: it is a fullness of power 
and life, attained through the mediation of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. “And of His fullness have all we 
received, and grace for grace.” 

“Grace for grace.” The symmetry of human 
character has always been one of the noble ideals ~ 
of the race. “Nothing in excess,” is a maxim as 
venerable as that other counsel of wisdom, “Know 
thyself.” It was one of the regulating principles of 
ancient literature and life. The philosophy of Aris- 
totle and the poetry of Horace ring with it. Certain 
of our own poets also have given happy expression 
to this ideal. Tennyson sings: 


“Self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control,— 
These three lead life to sovereign power.” 


And most happily Shakespeare says, in “Troilus 
and Cressida :” 


“Take but degree away, untune that string, 

And hark! what discord follows; each thing meets 
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters 

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 
And make a sop of all this solid globe.” 


The Golden Mean, however, is but a shadow of the 
Golden Rule: the one is a measured protection of 
life through prudence and discretion; the other is 
Christ coming into full action in a human life, and 


THe FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 41 


lifting it into the freedom and royalty of love. The 
lofty ethics of the Sermon on the Mount are only 
possible to him who has access to the resources of 
Christ; for the secret of the victorious life is in ~ 
coming to Christ constantly, instantly, and in con- 
tinually receiving of His fullness, grace upon grace. 

True symmetry of character is only attained in 
a fine poise of noble qualities. It is said that 
Paganini could get tolerable music from one string. 
Few succeed in the undertaking, though many at- 
tempt it. On the other hand, Wagner was com- 
pelled to invent new instruments to get all the 
harmonies and discords out of him. It requires the 
full orchestra, wind instruments, stringed instru- 
ments, and brass instruments, and the full chorus of 
true and balanced voices, to bring out the wondrous 
power of music to exalt, to move, and to melt the 
soul. Instrument fulfills instrument, voice supple- 
ments voice, “grace for grace.” 

St. John, in giving the dimensions of the Holy 
City, indicates also the ideal human character. “The 
city lieth four-square; the length and the breadth 
and the height of it are equal.” The driving energy, 
the human scope and sympathy, and the aspiration 
of life must be in just proportion. In a similar 
harmony, the Prophet Micah sums up human ob- 


ee ns om 
+ 7 : 


42 Tur Royalty oF JESUS. 


ligations: “What doth the Lord require of thee, 
but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God?” How this ideal of symmetry, the 
just poise of noble qualities, shines throughout the 
Word. “Righteousness and judgment are the habi- 
tations of His throne.” “Mercy and truth are met 
together, righteousness and peace have kissed each 
other.” “Truth shall spring up from the earth, and 
righteousness shall look down from heaven ;” “grace 
for grace.” 

There is an element of justice in all mercy, and 
an element of mercy in all justice. Sometimes 
wisdom and authority are most potent through the 
grace of silence. After God had given the Ten 
Commandments, “speaking out of the midst of the 
fire, of the cloud and thick darkness, with a great 
voice,” we read, “And He added no more.” How 
divine it is to know when to pause! Many a good 
purpose is defeated through multitudinous direction 
and detail. When our Lord, at Nazareth, had fin- 
ished reading the gracious invitation of the prophet, 
He closed the book; for the next sentence would 
have struck a note of vengeance, and the note of 
vengeance was not due then. With what grace our 
Lord mingled holiness and mercy and judgment as 
He silently wrote in the sand while the woman stood 


Tue FuLLNEss oF Curis’. 43 


before Him, “a guilty thing surprised,” but broken- 
hearted, and her accusers glared upon them both 
like beasts of prey. Now, it is the thought of John 
that, through the fullness of Christ, His disciples 
can truly interpret any situation in human life, and 
adequately meet it in speech, in action, or in en- 
durance. Turn now to the thirteenth chapter of 
First Corinthians, and read the same Gospel,—love 
enthroned fulfilling every law of human relationship, 
not according to any thumb-rule of ethics, but 
through a spirit of joyous self-sacrifice. See love 
passing into all the beauty of manifold grace and 
service, as a ray of light breaks into the splendors 
of the rainbow. “Love suffereth long and is kind, 
doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her 
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. Love 
beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
things.” “Grace for grace.” 

Zeal, the apostle tells us, is a good thing, but 
only when tempered with knowledge. The brother 
who mistakes his prejudice for his conscience, may 
be sincere and firm, yet all the more, on that account, 
troublesome. “Speaking the truth in love.” Can 
the truth ever be adequately spoken apart from love? 


2 


“Yes, mamma,” a child said; “you have the words 


the lady spoke, but not her tone.” Love alone can 


44 THE RoyaLty OF JESUS. 


give the tone to act or speech. Listen to the gra- 
cious counsel of St. Peter: “Add to your faith vir- 
tue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, 
temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to 
patience, godliness; and to godliness, charity.” 
“Grace for grace.” Again he writes, “Be cour- 
teous,”’ and he is the only apostle who uses the word. 
Now, where did the rough, swearing sailor of Gali- 
lee recognize and appropriate that rare grace of the 
Spirit? Well, he caught it by contagion through 
high fellowship with Christ Jesus the Lord. “And 
of His fullness” may we all receive “grace for 
grace,” and progress steadily in the beauty of holi- 
ness until we stand “without fault, before the throne 
of God.” 

Ill. With Christ the Faithful Life attains its 
Exceeding Great Reward. 

The true interpretation of human life is a spirit- 
ual one. The best possession one can acquire in 
the world is the eternal one which he may take out 
of it in his own soul, the abiding qualities the soul 
takes on through the spiritual victories and sharp 
discipline of life; in a word, grace. “What shall it 
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
himself?” A man’s sublime achievement is him- 
self; not what he owns; not what he knows; not 


THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 45 


what he does; but what he becomes. We belong, 
even here, to an eternal order, and the true signifi- 
cance of any thought, purpose, or act, is not meas- 
ured by outward results, but by its touch upon the 
soul. The full scope of human life is given by St. 
John, “Now are we the sons of God: and it doth 
not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that 
when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for 
we shall see Him as He is.” To be like Him, to 
have the mind and spirit of Christ Jesus the Lord, 
to enter into His joy, to attain His royalty,—that is 
the true goal and glory of existence. The process 
of setting the grace of Christ in the human spirit, 
therefore, trying as it may be at times, is by far 
the most important thing in life. 

Sometimes the grace of Christ is received 
through apparent loss. “What things were gain to 
me, those I count loss for Christ. I count all things 
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of 
Christ Jesus my Lord.” All knowledge costs, but 
none so much as “the excellency of the knoweldge 
of Christ Jesus” the Lord. Into that purchase price 
St. Paul cast his pride of descent, of position, of 
culture, his earthly prospect and possession. To 
secure the supreme pleasure hid in the field of life 
requires, ofttimes, the surrender of all outward 


46 Tur Royaty oF Jesus. 


possession. The young nobleman halted at the very 
gateway of the highest, the eternal life, because the 
glamour of the passing life was too strong upon 
him. Who can measure his loss? 


“There came a mist and a blinding rain, 
And life was never the same again.” 


When a noble ship was launched, not long ago, 
the crew was presented with a silver bell with which 
to regulate the life on board. One of the committee 
present at the casting of the bell suggested that it 
would be interesting to be personally identified with 
the event. Accordingly each one cast into the fur- 
nace a bit of silver, one a matchbox, one a watch- 
charm, one a coin, and so on; each article disap- 
peared as to form, but reappeared as music, far 
out on the sea. So, in life, many things disappear 
as to form, only to reappear in the beauty and grace 
of the Spirit. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes 
He became poor, that ye, through His poverty, 
might be rich.” That was the grace of Christ, 
supreme devotion to the life of the Spirit. 

Sometimes the grace of Christ is received 
through suffering. After the rich colors are placed 
on china, they must be set in fire. It is so with 


THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 47 


the purposes of the soul and with the process of the 
Spirit ; they, too, must be set on fire. After the bap- 
tism and vision of the Jordan, our Lord was led 
into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil; the 
fixed purpose of His life to be proved by the most 
subtle test. In those days and nights of solitude 
His royal purpose was assailed by the sharpest 
pangs of hunger, by the splendor of worldly tri- 
umph, by the glory of dominion ; but it did not yield. 
Following the victory came the angels ministering 
unto Him, and He returned “in the power of the 
Spirit into Galilee.” All great victories are first 
victories of the Spirit, and must be won within, 
somewhere in a wilderness battle. St. Paul was 
touched and tempered into power by the thorn in 
the flesh. For a time he was restless and impatient 
under it, but came at last to recognize it as a gift 
of God, and welcomed it for the grace of Christ 
that came with it. “My grace is sufficient for thee.” 
“Most gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the 
power of Christ may rest upon me.” ‘The radiant 
ones in glory are “they which came out of great 
tribulation.” “It became Him, for whom are all 
things and by whom are all things, in bringing many 
sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their sal- 
vation perfect through sufferings.” That was the 


48 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 


grace of Christ, perfect adjustment to the will of 
God. 

Sometimes the grace of Christ is received 
through victorious submission. ‘That is a new sort 
of victory,—to conquer through surrender. When 
our Lord entered Gethsemane, St. Mark tells us, 
He was sore amazed at the cup the Father gave 
Him to drink. It did not seem possible that a 
gracious Father could hold that bitter draught to 
His lips. But His perfect submission to the mys- 
terious, unexplained will of God, that step into the 
dark, won a world’s redemption. At Verona they 
treasure a mosaic representing the transfiguration: 
Moses and Elias are pointing to a cross as the true 
fulfillment of the law and the prophets and all life. 
To die on the cross of the Father’s appointment is 
better than to die amid the splendors of Pisgah, or 
to be swept into the heavens in a chariot of fire. 
Dante makes the mountain of purgatory glow and 
tremble with gladness, when the soul, in its ascent 
toward God, is wholly delivered and takes its first 
step into Paradise. Up there, on the lone mountain- 
top, our Lord chose the way of the cross, and in 
that act of perfect submission He stepped into the 
full light of God, and was transfigured by its glory 
until the very earth shone with splendor. It is 


THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 49 


always so: the cross which the Father appoints, 
though it may seem to beggar and ruin life, in 
reality exalts and transfigures it. We have seen 
them as they pass to and fro among us, the trans- 
figured lives, souls who have recognized the cross 
of the Father’s appointment, and have not shunned 
it, but have accepted it, though it seemed to con- 
sume life utterly, sealing it from below from every 
worldly joy, but filling it from above with all the 
fullness of God. That is a wonderful thing which 
science discloses to us in these modern days, the 
correlation of forces; one force passing over into 
and fulfilling itself in another force, power into 
electric energy, electric energy into heat, heat into 
light. But a more wonderful thing happens in the 
realm of the Spirit: “For brass I will bring gold.” 

Even higher yet is the transmutation of values. 
Our God transmutes loss and pain and sacrifice into 
grace and glory unto glory. He makes all things 
work together for good, through Christ, working in, 
first of all, though it may be with agony, to the very 
center of being, until the grace of Christ is set there; 
then, working out and on “in a far more exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory,” for ever and ever. 
This is St. John’s thought: over against our human 
life stands Jesus Christ, our risen, living, present 

4 


50 THE Royatty oF JESus. 


Lord, in all His fullness, in touch with all our need 
on the one hand, and on the other in touch with 
all the resources of God. 

“And of His fullness may all we receive, and 
grace for grace.” 


ITI. 
THE POWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 


“Vet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin 3; and 
. if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book 
which Thou hast written.’—ExoDUS XXXII, 32. 


THE text is not any word in all the book, but 
a certain dark line that stretches between the words. 
We find it here in the wondrous prayer of Moses 
when alone with God in the mountain, “If Thou 
wilt forgive their sin ;’ then he can go no 
farther ; he halts and sobs, and breaks down com- 
pletely. That dash there tells it all. Prayer is 
never so effective as when it becomes suddenly 
heart-breaking and unutterable. The ending of that 


prayer was not quite as its beginning; tender and 


beseeching as that was, there was a daring of love 

about it almost unparalleled. In the midst of his 

prayer the appalling enormity of Israel’s sin sweeps 

over Moses, and overwhelms him. For a moment 

he is in despair, silent and speechless. And yet, it 

is Israel, whose very existence as a people is threat- 
51 


52 Tue Royaty OF JESUS. 


ened; his own Israel, whom he led out of Egypt; 
for whom he lived, and for whom he will die. Put 
your ear down upon the black line, and you can 
almost hear the sobbing of Moses underneath it. 
You can see the tears streaming down his face, as 
he bows in speechless agony. You can well-nigh 
witness his heart breaking, in that crucial moment, 
when the awful agony issues in a daring choice of 
love, and suddenly you behold that daring choice 
of love issue in a new vision of God that transfigures 
the life and sets the halo of glory on the brow. 
You see him meeting the inevitable and yielding to 
it, taking that seeming step in the dark, making an 
absolute surrender of himself, and, in that surren- 
der, making the greatest discovery in human life, 
the discovery of the fathomless love of God. 

At the extreme point of sacrifice, Moses finds 
God Himself awaiting him, and that he was never 
so near God, never so precious to Him, never so 
much like Him as when he was willing to die for 
sinning Israel. Up there, upon the mountain of 
sacrifice, amid clouds and darkness, Moses, like 
Abraham, beheld the face of God; he caught the 
dawn of human redemption; he saw the sunrise of 
eternal love upon the world. “God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 


PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. - 53 


whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life.” Just there, where Moses 
thought he would die utterly, he entered, through 
absolute surrender, into the full glory of life, and 
thrilled with the compassion of God. Is it any 
wonder that his face shone? The power of a sur- 
rendered life: that, I take it, is the truth throbbing 
under the dark line. . 

The request of Moses that his own name, if need 
be, be blotted out of the book of God's writing, 
seems strange, very strange. Was it merely an 
imptlsive thing, the triumph of a passing mood? 
Did he, in a moment of despair, abandon all life 
and hope? Would he, by a supreme act of seli- 
immolation, challenge, if not arraign, even Divine 
love itself? Friend, “the arrow is beyond you.” 
Human love, it is true, in the intensity and extrava- 
gance of its devotion, will not, in a crisis, calculate, 
to a nicety, either its words or possessions, but will 
fling forth all eagerly, tumultuously, and even reck- 
lessly. The request of Moses, however, was neither 
impulsive nor violent; in the profoundest sense, it 
was calm, sincere, and sane. It is the paradox of 
love that, to live, it must give, and that to the utmost. 
Love identifies itself completely with its object, and 
with it must bear all and endure all, even to the 


54 Tue RoyaLty oF JEsus. 


farthest extremity. Moses, therefore, prays out of 
a heart overflowing in love and pity: “Forgive 
Thine Israel, my Israel ; if not, blot my name 
out of Thy book which Thou hast written: for I 
must share Israel’s burden, and with Israel die.” _ 
Earth, like that circle in heaven into which St. 
Paul was caught, has also its unutterable things, 


experiences of the deep inner life, which surpass 
the limitations of human speech. Love is one, sor- 
row is another, sacrifice another. We can never 
wholly utter them; we suggest them, rather, in 
various symbols of form, of color, of sound. We 
carve them into statues ; we paint them into pictures; 
we set them in music; and as we look and listen, 
“deep answers unto deep.”’ This dark line, stretch- 
ing between the lines, in the prayer of Moses, be- 
longs to this larger utterance of symbol. It suggests 
what could not be expressed ; it indicates a profound 
agitation of soul; it is the signal of an agony, a 
crisis, a triumph of the inner life beyond the power 
of words. As we meditate upon it, may “deep — 
answer unto deep!” 

The rare secret, the power of a surrendered life, 
learned there by Moses in the mount, was perhaps 
the most significant event in all his career. The 
thread of Divine providence ran through that life 


PowER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 55 


in a wondrous way, from the wicker basket on the 
Nile to the sweeping vision of Pisgah. Sometimes 
that thread became particularly luminous; it was 
so in that hour, when he stood beside the flaming 
bush in Horeb and heard God speaking to him out 
of the flame. It was so when, at the bidding of 
Jehovah, he withstood the oppressor of his people 
in Egypt, and smote the Nile until it “ran red to 
the sea.” It was so when, at the word of God, “he 
stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the Lord 
overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.” 
But sublimer than any of these is the great achieve- 
ment which lies under the dark line, the absolute 
sacrifice of himself, before God, in behalf of sinning 
Israel, the glory of a surrendered life. 

Twice Moses ascended the mountain, and was 
shut in with God “forty days and forty nights.” 
Time exposure is one condition of masterful power 
in art, in literature, in life, in religion. Elijah found 
it soon Horeb. The Lord was not in the tempest, 
the earthquake, or the fire; but “after the fire a 
still small voice” signaled His presence. “Though 
the vision tarry, wait for it.’ John on Patmos found 
it so: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” Only 
when his heart was quiet, “like waters stilled at 
even,” could he discern the “Holy City coming 


56 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 


down from God out of heaven.” “Wait, I say, on 
the Lord.” Snapshots are of no great value any- 
where. Up there, in the silence of the mountain 
and in the deeper silence of the spirit, Moses tarried 
with God. It is to be noticed, however, that only 
after the second ascent did Moses return with a 
shining face. Ah! the secret of the shining 
face,—it is worth searching for. When Moses 
came down the mountain, after the first as- 
cent, he found Israel, for whom he had prayed and 
toiled and sacrificed so much, suddenly and deeply 
fallen into sin and shame. He had just left the 
mysterious presence of God on the summit of the 
mountain, and now, at its base, so near and yet so 
far, he beholds Israel dancing, like heathen, around 
an idol in foolish, drunken glee, and Aaron looking 
on in bewildered, hopeless opportunism. In an 
instant the vision of God lost its spell upon him. 
The natural Moses asserted itself in full power 
and without restraint. He did what is so familiar 
in our human experience; he lost possession of him- 
self, and broke out in passionate wrath and violence. 
He broke the tables of the law before the eyes of 
the people. It was the signal of his own bitter 
despair. All seemed hopeless. Dark thoughts ran 
through his mind. What is the use of trying to do 


POWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 57 


anything for such a people? They are so low and 
coarse, so foolish and perverse, they can never be 
lifted into decency and righteousness; better leave 
them in their shame, and give up in disgust the task 
of their deliverance. And there, on the rocks, he 
smashed before their very eyes those God-given 
tables. That was the lowest point in the career of 
Moses, that apparent mood of hopelessness and 
despair. The people fled in dismay. After a time, 
under the stroke of judgment, Israel awoke to a 
sense of their sin. 

Then follows a scene which beggars description : 
all Israel in tears, confessing, weeping, pleading. 
It was too much for Moses. His heart is touched 
by their sorrow and anguish. He begins to relent, 
to pity, and even to hope for restoration; but he 
is not sure of God. He himself would be willing 
to pass their failure, and begin again; but he is not 
sure of God. The best he can do is to make a great 
venture in their behalf, to ascend the mountain 
again and talk with God about their sin. But he 
is not sure of the issue. He is sure of his own 
love and pity, else would not he venture up the 
mountain ; but he is not sure of the love and mercy 
of God in the face of such enormity of sin. As 
he turns to go up the mountain, one can imagine 


58 Tue Royaty oF JESUS. 


him passing the spot where the tables of the law 
had been broken, and glancing at the pathetic ruin. 
Here and there a word is still intact, “Thou shalt 
have no other—” but the sentence runs no farther; 
the conclusion has been broken away. “Remem- 
ber—” but the word stands alone, a mere fragment 
of a vanished glory. 

Ah! have we not also brought strong resolutions 
down from some mount of vision,. only to shatter | 
them at its base, and behold them mocking us in 
their fragments? But Moses pushes on up the 
mountain to meet God. We will let him tell it: 
“And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first. 
Forty days and forty nights I did neither eat bread 
nor drink water, because of all your sin. And I 
prayed unto the Lord, O Lord God, destroy not this 
_ people and Thine inheritance which Thou hast re- 
deemed through Thy greatness. O, this people have 
sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of 
gold; yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin ; 
if not, blot me out of Thy book which Thou hast 
written.” Now, is there a sweeter thing in all the 
Book of God than the answer to that prayer? “And 
the Lord said, I will do this thing that thou hast 
said, for thou hast found grace in My sight and I 


know thee by name.” It was there that Moses came 
to know truly the living God, against whom he had 


PoweER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 59 


been measuring his own heart of love. And the 
Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him 
there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord: THE 
Lorp GoD MERCIFUL AND GRACIOUS, LONGSUFFERING 
AND ABUNDANT IN GOODNESS AND TRUTH.” No 
wonder that, when Moses came down the mountain 
from that interview, his face shone; for the last 
barrier within his heart had been swept away, and 
God had come into it in all the fullness of love and 
light and glory. It is a wonderful process, this 
sweeping away the barriers within until God is All 
in all. Slowly they yield, often one by one, under 
the weight of new experiences, under the pressure 
of imperious necessities. Have you read with the 
heart, “My strength is made perfect in weakness?” 
We should think it would be the other way, that our 
strength, fully asserted and stretched to the utmost, 
would touch the strength of God. So we attempt 
the great ascent in that fashion, time after time, 
until we are worn out with bitter failure. And then, 
in our very weakness, we find the might of God. 


“T was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou 
Shouldst lead me on: 
I loved to choose and see my path; but now, 
Lead Thou me on. 
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, 
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.” 


60 Tue Roya,ty oF JEsus. 


The power of a surrendered life,—that was the 
secret Jacob learned through the night of agony at 
Jabbok. When he could no longer struggle, but 
only cling to the angel in the dark, in daring hope 
and trust, he prevailed; his very weakness touched 
the strength of God. Moses, we are told, was the 
meekest man of all the earth. Yes, meekness was 
his last and greatest achievement. He was not 
naturally so; men born meek are of no great value. 
It is the acquired grace, the grafted fruit, that has 
all the beauty and flavor. The word translated 
meekness in our New Testament, is, in classical 
Greek, used of the taming of horses. A spirited 
horse is not ruined in the taming, but adjusted to 
the noble uses of strength. Meekness is, therefore, 
not weakness, but the right adjustment of power. 
That was the untamed Moses who put the Egyptian 
away in the sand so suddenly ; that was the partially 
tamed Moses who smashed the Divine Command- 
ments on the rocks; that was the new, the true 
Moses who came down the mountain with a shining 
face, meek at last, thoroughly tamed, perfectly 
adjusted to the Divine will and method in the 
world, and to his human task. Then it was he 
entered into the power and glory of a surrendered 
life. 


PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 61 


Let us hold before our minds, for a brief space, 
the full significance of some of these things lying 
under the dark line. And first of all this new dis- 
covery of God. 

There is a lofty mountain in China called the 
Glory of Buddha. From its summit at times, one 
can behold a circular rainbow ; not a mere fragment, 
but a perfect circle of glowing color. There is a 
point, likewise, in human experience where one gets 
a clear vision of God; a vision not of material splen- 
dor, but of the gracious and eternal qualities of His 
heart. “Clouds and darkness are round about Him, 
righteousness and judgment are the habitation of 
His throne; mercy and truth go before His face.” 
It is only when one takes the daring step into the 
darkness, through heroic faith, as Moses did, that 
he can really see God; for the large, true vision of 
the Eternal is always a heart-vision. The intellect 
recognizes power and wisdom as they are manifested 
about us. The Norseman familiar with the rever- 
berations of the freezing, cracking ice through the 
long winter night, and the booming of trees falling 
in the track of the storm, named the invisible 
one Thor, the Thunderer. The Greek, living in a 
more genial clime, and more impressed with the con- 
trivances in the world about him for utility and 


62 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 


beauty, named the invisible one Mind; but the in- 
most nature of God, Love, was never a discovery of 
the intellect. Man himself has never been able to 
make sure of it. The deepest questions which have 
ever shaken the soul are just these: Is there a per- 
sonal Being at the center of all? Is He benevolent, 
or malevolent? In other words, is there a personal 
God? Is God love? After the utmost achievement 
of the human intellect, unaided, the answer is pain- 
fully uncertain. In all mythologies and pagan re- 
ligions the element of fear predominates over that of 
hope. In India, it is said, there are more idols to 
the destroyer of life than to its preserver. The fool 
of King Lear, crouching under the driving storm, 
wails out, 


“Here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.” 


The human tragedy goes on under the sky, 
generation after generation, and Heaven appar- 
ently makes no sign. A Viennese gentleman 
attempted a perilous ascent of the Alps alone, 
and perished. When his body was afterwards 
found, the icy fingers held a paper with this 
inscription, “’T is cold, and clouds shut out the 
view.” We can not make our way to God alone. 
Up there on the barren heights of human specula- 


PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 63 


ce 9, 


tion “ ’t is cold, and clouds shut out the view.” The 
agnostic of the twentieth century, with all his science 
and wealth of knowledge, has no clearer vision of 
God than the agnostic of the first century. He 
still writes upon the altar of religion, “To the un- 
known God.” 

Now Moses went up the mountain in trem- 
bling uncertainty, not of the power of God, not 
of the wisdom of God, not of the righteousness 
of God, but of His love and mercy. Would 
they endure the strain put upon them by human 
sin? Could God forgive the enormity of Israel’s 
sin? Would grace be found in Him—grace, 
unmerited favor, and boundless love? For Israel’s 
sake he would make the venture, even amid clouds 
and darkness, and put the issue to the test. “If 
Thou wilt forgive their sin ; and if not, blot me 
I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast 
written.” Just there, at the flaming point of self- 


sacrifice, God met him and answered him. “And 
when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord 
began also, with the trumpets.” Through his own 
sacrifice of love he discovers that God Himself is 
love—eternal, fathomless love—and that the most 
central and potent thing in the universe, greater 
even than power or wisdom or justice—being in 


64 THE RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


fact, all these united and more—is love. There in 
the mountain, through the power of a surrendered 
life, Moses beheld the glory of God, love in action; 
he saw God, not abandoning Israel or the race, but 
Himself bearing the burden of human sin in utmost 
sacrifice.. From the cleft of the rock he caught a 
glimpse of the far-away consummation of love and 
sacrifice in human redemption, and learned crea- 
tion’s deepest secret, the profoundest truth of life, 
that “God is love.” ‘“THEr LORD GOD MERCIFUL AND 
GRACIOUS, LONGSUFFERING AND ABUNDANT IN GOOD- 
NESS AND TRUTH.” 

Under the dark line we find also the hidden law 
of life, self-sacrifice. ‘‘He that findeth his life shall 
lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake 
shall find it.’ At the very point where Moses ap- 
parently lost all, he found all. When he seemed to 
be putting all in a grave he was passing to a throne. 
At the moment of full surrender he touched the 
point of highest exaltation. The secret of power is 
not in violent self-assertion, making one’s own will 
the dominant and masterful thing, but in thorough 
adjustment with the perfect will of God, and ina 
complete surrender to the call of love, however ex- — 
treme or consuming it may seem. This is the secret 
of Jesus,—the power of a surrendered life: “I came 


POWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 65 


down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the 
will of Him that sent Me.” “I can of Mine own self 
do nothing; as I hear I judge, and My judgment is 
just, because I seek not Mine own will, but the will 
of the Father that hath sent Me.” “The Father hath 
not left Me alone, for I always do those things that 
please Him.” “For even Christ pleased not Him- 
self.” The full force of Satan’s assault in the wil- 
derness was directed against the will of Christ, 
aiming, by repeated assaults, through appetite, 
through the reason and the imagination, to induce 
Him to take the direction of His life in His own 
hands. Our Lord’s victory there was in rejecting 
all suggestions, however plausible, and in yielding 
utterly, without questioning and without reserve, to 
the will of the Father. The consummation of His 
perfect sacrifice was in that moment in Gethsemane 
when He took the bitter cup offered Him, though 
with a trembling hand, and deliberatelly chose the 
mysterious cross that threatened Him, though in 
sore amazement. “Father, all things are possible 
unto Thee; take away this cup from Me: never- 
theless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” 
“Wherefore, God hath highly exalted Him, and 
given Him a name which is above every name.” 
Death is evermore the gatewav to the highest life. 
5 


66 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 


“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit.” Follow the grain of wheat into 
the dark earth. Hear it exclaim, “I must pull myself 
together amid these unfavorable surroundings, and 
resist to the utmost these forces closing in upon me.” 
But Nature kindly whispers, “O, little grain, let go, 
let go!” And as it lets go and begins to die, it 
begins to live, and to push its way up into a world 
of light and glory. It is the power of a surrendered 
life. As we let go of lower things, and even die 
to them, we rise into higher things, and enter into 
the life of God. 

History is aflame with this truth, the power of a 
surrendered life. The turning point in St. Paul’s 
career was there on the Damascene way, when he 
caught a clear vision of the risen and reigning 
Jesus, and yielded absolute loyalty to Him. “Lord, 
what wilt Thou have me to do?” In that question, 
there was a great surrender and a daring choice. 
He surrendered every hope the heart holds dear, and 
in so doing appropriated the power and glory of 
spiritual forces. Who, now, can gauge His power 
or measure the growing orbit of His influence? 
That Jew of Tarsus, there on the Damascene way, 
found the true path of life, and on it is still moving 


Power OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 67 


upward “from glory unto glory.” The secret of 
St. Paul’s life was the power of a surrendered life. 
One of the sublimest scenes of history is that of 
Martin Luther making his great confession before 
the Diet of Worms. “Here I stand, I can not do 
otherwise; God help me.” Like Moses on Sinai, 
he surrendered there every human prospect; but in 
doing so he clothed himself with thunder, and shook 
all the tyrannies of time. The click of his hammer, 
as he nailed his defiant theses to the old church in 
Wittenberg, still echoes around the world. Lwuther’s 
secret was the power of a surrendered life. When 
John Wesley, driven from the church, preached the 
gospel from his father’s tomb, he made a brave sur- 
render of all this present world can offer. “He 
went forth unto him without the camp, bearing his 
reproach.” From that moment God wondrously 
honored him, making even the wide world his 
parish. Wesley’s secret was the power of a surren- 
dered life. But the time would fail me to tell of 
Knox, of Carey, of Livingstone, of the long list of 
mighty ones “who dared to do great things for God, 
and expected great things from God.” ‘Theirs was 
the secret that lies under the dark line, the secret 
Moses learned on Sinai, the power of a surrendered 
life. We are weak because we are yet whole. We 


68 THE Royatty OF JESUS. 


shrink from the humiliation, the pain, the sacrifice 
of the highest service. We will not utterly die, 
lacking that test, that daring step into the dark, 
that brings the fullness of God. 

Under the dark line we discover, too, the glory 
that transfigures human life. “And when Israel 
saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone.” The 
deepest thing in the heart will report itself in the 
countenance. The very history of the soul is writ- 
ten in the face, its secret triumph or disaster, and 
sooner or later it will be read there. Sometimes the 
lines become suddenly luminous, as in the case of 
Moses. ‘True personality, the real quality of the 
spirit, can not be permanently hidden. Some sudden 
emergency will shatter any mask that may be 
framed about it. In some great crisis the true soul 
will look out of the windows, in glory or in shame. 
The life we cherish within, the companionship we 
hold there is steadily making or marring us, and the 
record will stand. ‘The inner chaice, the purpose, 
the act of the soul, says with a truer emphasis than 
that of Pilate, “What I have written, I have writ- 
ten.” We can not see what is going on in the tulip- 
bed, but there is a day in June when the splendor is 
apparent. For weeks, Moses was hidden amid the 


PowER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 69 


splendors of Sinai; but there was a day when all 
Israel saw the glory of his great achievement. 
“Give me a great thought,” said the dying 
Herder, “that I may stir my soul with it.” We have 
seen the soul stirred by thought, the mind awakened 
and inspired, the countenance transfigured, in light 
and joy, like a wire glowing in the electric current. 


Donne thus expresses it: 


“Her pure and eloquent blood 

Spoke in her cheek, so distinctly wrought 

That one might almost say her body thought.” 
It was the transfiguring power of thought that 
thrilled the poet Keats when he first looked into 
Homer: 

“Then was I like some watcher in the skies 

When a new planet swims into his ken; 


Or like stout Cortes when, with eagle eyes, 
He stared at the Pacific.” 


Again he wrote: 


“Suddenly, a thought came like a full-blown rose, 

Flushing his brow.” 

There is a transfiguration of the emotions. 
When Newton saw through the glowing figures 
that his daring conception would be established, and 
that a new truth was about to dawn upon the world, 


‘ 


70 THE Royaty oF Jxsus. 


he was not able to finish the demonstration with his 
trembling fingers, but, calling an assistant to write 
out the result, he seemed like one inspired, trans- 
figured with emotion of wonder and joy. One day, 
Pasteur, at work in his laboratory, suddenly realized 
that the experiment before him that meant so much 
for human welfare, and which he had prosecuted 
through long years with patience and skill and un- 
utterable solicitude, was now about to be successful. 
He writes, “My soul knew a moment of joy in 
which the spirit took on, in an instant, all the 
glories of the rainbow.” That was the transfigura- 
tion of the emotions. 

There is a transfiguration of a royal will. When 
Wolfe received from the Prime Minister of England 
his commission as leader of the expedition against 
Quebec, the grandeur of the undertaking came down 
upon him like a cloud of glory, and he registered 
there his consecration to the splendid enterprise and 
to death in such a frenzy of joy and exultation that 
the timid, shrinking Pitt was appalled, and declared 
him mad. But he was not mad. Against that 
masterful will the Rock of Quebec became as a 
grain of sand, and the whole continent changed 
. position in history, and moved forward a thousand 
years. That was a transfiguration of a royal will. 


PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 71 


Even more wonderful is the transfiguration of 
10ve, love made perfect in sacrifice. It is just this 
that makes our human life take on divine qualities. 
What but the transfiguration makes the mother’s 
face shine with a “light that never was on sea or 
land?” Through pain, through anxiety, through 
the agony of prayer and perfect sacrifice she has 
passed, like Moses, into the very light of God, and 
it lingers on her brow. “In thy face I have seen the 
Eternal,” said the dying Bunsen to his noble Chris- 
tian wife. It was true, “ for the spirit of man is the 
candle of the Lord.” Only through a human spirit 
can the glory of God, His moral beauty, His grace, 
His unfailing love, shine out upon the world. In 
the Cathedral of St. Mark’s, at Venice, the guide 
will hold up a lighted candle behind the alabaster 
pillars until they glow with the soft and radiant 
beauty. So the human spirit may glow with the light 
and glory of God. We belong to a divine order, 
and even here there are flashes and hints of coming 
glory. “Behold what manner of love the Father 
hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the 
sons of God: and we are. And it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be; but we know that when 
He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall 
see Him as He is.” Moses, through the power of a 


72 Tue Royaty oF JEsus. 


surrendered life, stepped into the very light of God; 
through his perfect sacrifice, he was in a measure 
like Him, and for an instant saw Him as He is, and 
the vision transfigured him. 

Now as a last word; the surrendered life is not 
a mere passing one, it is not paralyzed by the incom- 
ing God. To surrender the life to God is but to 
open the channels of thought, of feeling, of action, 
to the Divine energies. “I am crucified with Christ,” 
says St. Paul; “nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me.” St. Paul lived a larger, fuller, 
truer life after Christ found him than ever before. 
The ruby caught up into the sunlight loses nothing 
of its native quality because of the light that fills it; 
it only increases its beauty in the light. So human 
life only comes into full possession of itself in God. 
“They shall see His face, and His name shall be in 
their foreheads.” Your individuality is precious to 
God, and He will not destroy it, but preserve it 
forever, and, by His own transfiguring light, carry it 
up to its fullness of power and glory. This, then, is 
the power of a surrendered life, the appropriation 
of the true life, even of the fullness of God. 


IV. 
“THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST.” 


“The light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ.”—2 Cor. Iv, 6. 


THERE is a wonderful picture that hangs in 
South Kensington Museum, London. It represents 
the death of Oliver Cromwell, the mightiest man of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, a Hercules among the kings 
of the earth. Shadows fill the room, falling upon 
the bed and upon the faces of surrounding friends. 
The center of light in the picture is a Bible lying 
upon the breast of Cromwell, over which his hands 
are folded, and from which the light streams up 
into the dying hero’s face. The conception is a 
happy one; for it was from the Word of God that 
Cromwell, the Puritan prince, drew the light and 
strengh of his life. In the picture a face is lumi- 
nous from the Book. In our meditation this morn- . 
ing, I would have you see the Book luminous from 
a face. For the significance of the Gospel lies in 

73 


74 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 


this, that it holds for us a distinct impression of 
Jesus Christ. 

Only a few of the sons of men enjoyed the 
strange and wonderful experience of gazing into 
the face of Jesus Christ, and under that spell they 
said very startling things. One exclaimed, “Thou 
art the Christ ;” and another, “Thou art the Son of 
God.” The mighty Baptist in prophetic trance cried 
out, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Peter wailed in 
agony as he fell on his knees before the face, “De- 
part from me, I am a sinful man.” ‘The Samaritan, 
conscience-smitten, exclaimed, “T perceive that Thou 
art a prophet.” The leper prayed, “Lord, if Thou 
wilt, Thou canst make me clean.” A Jewish ruler, 
- looking into His face said, “We know that Thou art 
a teacher sent from God;”’ and a Roman centurion, 
beholding His expiring agonies, confessed, “Truly 
this man was the Son of God.” When the profane 
and treacherous Simon caught sight of that wonder- 
ful face in the palace of Caiaphas, he went out into 
the night and wept bitterly. And when, on the 
Damascene way, that face shone out from the 
heavens brighter than the sun, upon the fierce and 
murderous Saul, “it reversed for him the highest 
wisdom of the past, and canceled his inheritance in 
the privilege and pride of centuries.” 


“Tur Face oF Jesus Curist.”’ 75 


Every human face is a veil that partly reveals 
and partly conceals a soul. In its mysterious 
script there are hints of its hidden past—hints of 
triumph and disaster, of far-reaching thoughts and 
hopes, of fathomless depths of feeling and desire. 
In the face, temperament, life, character, selfhood, 
are more or less clearly depicted. The face, then, 
is the highest expression of individuality; of its 
essential nature; of its dominant trait, passion, or 
desire. It flashes out with vividness the changing 
lights of the inner life. Let us endeavor to set this 
truth, the expressiveness of the human face, in the 
clear light of illustration. How the human passions 
play upon its surface! How hate and wrath, for 
instance, are sometimes shadowed thereon! 


“You have,” says one, “such a February face, 
So full of frost and storm and cloudiness.” 


What royalty is sometimes enthroned in a human 
face! When Jenny Lind first saw Daniel Webster 


2 


she exclaimed, “I have seen a man;” such intelli- 
gence, strength, and gentleness blended in his face. 
She looked into his great calm eyes, “like waters 


’ 


stilled at even,” and knew that in the silent depths 
the lightning slept. Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, look- 


ing into the same face, exclaimed, “What majesty 


76 THe Royatty oF JEsus. 


sits upon his brow! What a model for the head of 
Jupiter!” Marlowe, in his words to Helen of Troy, 
has set forever in immortal lines the mysterious 
charm and resistless might of beauty: 


“Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?” 


Milton, in the Third Book of ‘Paradise Lost:;” 
gives a pathetic hint of his own blindness and meas- 


ures his own loss in an ascending scale: 


“Thus with the year 
Seasons return, but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.” 


Yes, the human face divine; for it can glow with 
the light that never was on sea or land. 

Who can measure the meaning of the psalmist’s 
words, “The beauty of holiness ?”— a beauty sur- 
passing far the charm of perfect outline, the glow of 
passion, or the majesty of thought. The dying Bun- 
sen, looking up into the face of his noble wife, 
exclaimed, “In thy face I have seen the Eternal.” 
For is it not true that just as the still waters hold 
in their quiet bosoms the shining worlds above them, 
so the human spirit, deep, and pure, and quiet, may 


“reflect the glory of the invisible God?’ What was 
Ome 


“THe Face oF Jesus CurIst.” 77 


it but the “beauty of holiness,” the “face of the 
Eternal,’ that shone in the face of Moses when he 
came down from the dark and awful mount? What 
was it but the “beauty of holiness,” the “face of the 
Eternal,’ that glowed in the angel face of Stephen 
when he looked up steadfastly into the open heavens, 
and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the 
right hand? And what was that radiant glory that 
held the wondering disciples on the mountain, when 
the Master’s face shone as the sun, and His gar- 
ments glistened as the light? What was that but 
the “beauty of holiness,” the “face of the Eternal?” 
Certainly the human face is the grandest of all 
mysteries; for it registers in a marvelous way the 
life and power and passing glory of an immortal 
spirit. And that passing glory the utmost art of 
brush, or chisel, or pen can but hint, not portray. 
For the human face is like the sea: the tides of 
feeling run high and low upon it. The human 
face is like the sky: light and shadow, clouds and 
mist, come and go upon it. The human face, the 
plainest one, is therefore unattainable in art. The 
best portrait is but the mood of an instant, caught, 
and that not perfectly. If this be true of any 
face, how much more so of the “face of Jesus 
Christ,”—‘“that face which troubled the Sanhedrin, 


78 Tue Royatty oF JEsus. 


which hushed the murderous mob and confounded 
the power of Rome; the face to which little children 
turned with confiding love, and before which peni- 
tent publicans and harlots and the dying robber 
found the utmost consolation; the face which was 
set against all evil, which unmasked all hypocrisy, 
and broke the hearts of treacherous discciples; 
the face which read all that was in man, and saw 
into the depths of heaven,”—the face of Jesus 
Christ. Who can portray that face in color, in 
speech, or in stone? Artists, in their approach to 
the impossible, have succeeded best with the child 
Christ and with the dead Christ; because in these 
regions they have been able to utilize two proximate 
reserves of power. In Raphael’s Madonnas the ideal 
child charms us by the suggestion of eternal youth, 
by some faint touch of the Ancient of Days. In 
Rubens’s “Descent from the Cross,” even death 
seems to pulsate with strange hints of coming vic- 
tory. But the living Christ, the man Christ, full of 
truth and grace, He is beyond art. 

Where, then, may we behold “the face of Jesus 
Christ ?” 

Here let us bring into view the larger thought of 
the apostle. We have seen that the human face is 
the highest expression of individuality of character, 


“Tue Facre oF JESUS CHRIST.” 79 


of power. Now it is but a step from that fact to the 
use of the word face for personality. Here, then, 
we have the apostle’s thought in its fullness. By the 
phrase, “the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ,” the apostle indicates, first of all, the human 
appearance of our Lord, the incarnation by which 
the glory of the Eternal shone in our humanity. 
He includes also personality, all that we mean by 
individuality, character, achievement. 

The face of Jesus Christ, as a human appearance, 
has passed from the earth. It is no longer possible 
to know Him after the flesh. But “the face of Jesus 
Christ” as a personality is an enduring possession, 
the chief glory of the race. Doubtless it was a 
great privilege to look into the human face of the 
Son of man, but it is vastly more to apprehend Him 
as a spiritual personality. Hence our Lord said, “It 


, 


is expedient for you that I go away;” expedient 
that the human appearance pass away, that the spir- 
itual personality might remain. Now, if you think 
of the Apostle Peter before the ascension and after 
it, you can measure the significance of our Lord’s 
words. And the Apostle Paul also says, “Though 
we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now hence- 
forth we know Him no more,” having passed on 
from the human appearance to the spiritual person- 


80 Tue Royauty oF Jesus 


ality. So it is not our privilege to know Christ after 
the flesh, but the more blessed privilege is ours to 
know Him as a spiritual personality. In this sense, 
“the face of Jesus Christ” is held for us in the Book 
which records His history, His examples, His teach- 
ing, His service, His sacrifices. If you will recall 
the illustration with which we set out, the thought 
will be clear. In that scene, Cromwell’s face was 
made luminous by the Book, but here the Book itself 
is made luminous by the “face of Jesus Christ.” 
The Divine-human personality of Jesus Christ is 
the center of light from which all knowledge, grace 
and glory stream. In the light of His face and 
personality the Book grows luminous. Hence, 
our Lord, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, 
expounded the Scriptures unto His disciples, 
opening them that they might behold His face in 
them. And the apostle declares that at the read- 
ing of the Old Testament the veil is unlifted on 
the face of Israel to this day through unbelief, but 
that believing ones, with unveiled faces, are changed 
into the same image from glory unto glory. 

Have we not all known Christian men and 
women who, by continually studying the Word and 
living it, beheld more clearly the face of Jesus 
Christ, daily acquiring deeper insight into His mind 


“THE Face oF Jesus Curist.” . 81 


and quicker sympathy with His Spirit, who were 
slowly transfigured through the years, to whom life 
was a constant ascent of character, a continual 
changing from glory unto glory? 

That this truth may not be hazy and distinct, 
let us draw it out somewhat in detail. Let us con- 
sider in what respect the knowledge of “the glory of 
God in the face of Jesus Christ” enlightens us. 

We take three points. The face of Jesus Christ 
then, His appearance among us, His personality as 
revealed by the Gospel, illuminates for us,— 

1. The natural world in which we live. 

2. The ideal world to which we aspire. 

3. The unseen world, of which we dream. 

I, First, then, this Natural World in which we 
live. 

The vastness of this material universe had op- 
pressed human hearts long before the telescope had 
opened our eyes, and before science had startled 
us with its deep analysis and broad generalizations. 
What is man amid the huge mass of matter in these 
vast spaces? “What is man that Thou art mindful 
of him?” has been a standing question in all genera- 
tions. And the question is more painful and the 
silence more tragical as science advances. We 
crown with honor the thinkers and experimenters 

6 


82 Tue Royvayty oF Jesus. 


who enlarge our plane of vision and conquest of 
nature. The recent death of the astronomer Adams 
recalls one of the signal triumphs of human thought. 
He pushed his conjecture boldly out into space, and 
declared that there was an unknown planet moving 
in the dark. And when the great telescope was 
turned to the point he indicated, the shining world 
was seen. During this neighborly mood of Mars, 
the whole world is waiting with interest the observa- 
tions made by the Lick Observatory, so favorably 
situated upon the mountains. But, after all, it is 
not with the telescope that we get the true view 
of the universe, but at the cross. Mere pro- 
jection does not help us much. We grow 
dizzy in thought and faint in spirit, as the plane of 
vision extends. It only makes our grave the 
deeper. What we want is not a vision of the 
rim of things, but the center of things, and that we 
get at the cross. We discover there that this uni- 
verse is not a soulless mill, grinding us to powder, 
but the threshold of our Father’s house. We learn 
there that creation and humanity are related to God 
ina vital way. It is doubtless true as Pascal shows, 
that there is more value in a single thought than in 
the whole universe of matter, and that there is more 
value in a single motion of love than in the whole 


“THe Face oF Jesus CHRIsT.” 83 


universe of thought. It is so with God. Above all, 
and the center of all, is love. His supreme name, 
His essential nature, is love. This is made real to 
us in the gift and sacrifice of His Son, “in the face 
of Jesus Christ.” 

Let me fix this thought in your minds forever by 
uniting two passages of Scripture, one from the 
Psalms and one from the apostle. The psalmist 
says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Do 
you hear their song of power, of wisdom, of beauty? 
Now listen to the words of the apostle, “God who 
shined out of darkness [striking the song of the 
stars with a ray oi light] hath shined in our hearts 
to give the light of the glory of God in the face of 
Jesus Christ.” There is a glory of God of which 
the stars sing,—power, wisdom, beauty; but there 
is a glory of God of which the stars are silent,— 
holiness, love, mercy ; and that glory shines for us in 
the face of Jesus Christ. And so we say the cross 
is the center of light and healing in the universe, 
however vast it may be. 

Il. Ji illuminates for us the Ideal World to 
which we aspire. 

Man is the only creature on earth that does not 
live contentedly in a world of sense, that does not 


84 THE Royaty oF Jesus. 


attain his true felicity there. The flower needs no 
voice, the bird no book. The physical processes are 
to them final. But man is a living soul, and as such 
dwells in a spiritual world, even while in the body. 
He is under physical laws in the play of material 
forces and the craving of natural appetite, but he is 
equally under spiritual law in the necessity that is 
upon him to harmonize his inner life, affections, de- 
sires, and purposes with truth, righteousness, and 
love. To be or to enjoy are the opposite poles of 
life, the aspiration of soul and the craving of sense, 
the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of 
life. To be or to enjoy, that is the everlasting 
human battle that has always been going on in 
the world, and which we understand so well. 
It was the issue in Eden—obedience or indulge 
ence. It was the issue in Isaac’s household— 
the birthright or the pottage. It was the issue 
on the Mount of Temptation—supremacy of soul 
or supremacy of sense. Now we honor as angels 
of light those men in all the past who have 
emphasized for us the worth of self-conquest, 
and who have helped us on the way; such as 
Socrates, Aurelius, Epictetus. But the greatest of 
the sons of men is the Son of Mary, whom John 
baptized, whom Pilate crucified. As Renan has 


“Tur Facr oF JESUS CHRIST.” 85 


truly said, “Whatever may be the surprises of the 
future, Jesus will never be surpassed.” Let the best 
of men pass in review before Him—Moses, Con- 
fucius, Buddha, Solomon, Socrates, Aurelius—and 
their luster pales in His light. Confront Him with 
the ideals of Greek or Barbarian, of Oriental sage 
or European philosopher, and He is immeasurably 
beyond them, yet in living touch with the lowliest 
and most sinful of men. 

Certainly, of all who have lived on earth, Jesus 
Christ has accomplished the most for the race. But 
how? He was no author as Plato was; no scientist 
as Aristotle was; no conqueror as Cesar was; no 
inventor, like Galileo, Watt, or Stephenson; no 
founder of a State, like Peter the Great, Alfred of 
England, or Washington. He touched the souls of 
men. His is a Spiritual Empire. He taught men 
what to aspire to and how to attain it, where to live 
and how. That is a suggestive question we ask of 
one another, “Where are you living now?” meaning 
in what Sate or on what street; but it may probe 
deeper. Are you living up or down? Now, Jesus 
Christ shows us how to live, to live anywhere and 
to live up. “From the face of Jesus Christ” the 
human problem grows luminous. 

Let us see if we can set forth briefly, yet clearly, 


86 Tue Royaty oF Jesus. 


our Lord’s central teachings. We shall find them, I 
think, to be these: First, that all true living begins in 
the filial relation between God and man. Christ’s 
thought of man is this, that he is a son of God who 
has lost his way in this world, and who only comes 
to himself and finds his way in God. It is very 
simple, but very sublime. What light there is in 
that truth, how it interprets our hidden life! It ex- 
plains the piercing light of conscience, the unutter- 
able longing of the soul, the deep thirst of the spirit. 
It is because we are children of God that we can not 
be content in a world of sense. ‘There is not room 
for the Oceanic in our little harbor; the plan of the 
vessel implies the ocean. So our very moral consti- 
tution implies God and eternity. There is something 
mightier than a planet pulling away at our hearts; 
it is the drawing of the Father. See how distinct and 
prominent our Lord makes this filial relation. He 
says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” 
Life is not a mere intellectual process, asking and 
answering questions; it is knowing the Father. 
“This is life to know the Father;” nothing 
less and nothing else is life. “Ye must be 
born again,” come into vital, personal, filial 
relation with God. ‘“Knowest thou the Father?” 
How impressively our Lord shows, in the Sermon 


“Tre Face oF Jesus CHRIst.” 87 


on the Mount, that true religion is not a 
matter of ceremonial observance, but a recog- 
nition of the filial relation and loyalty to it. Prayer 
He shows, is not a form of words, but a coming to 
the Father. In the parable He shows that the prod- 
igal is lost and famine-stricken because he has turned 
away from his father and wasted his bounty. This 
primal truth of filial relation he kept ever before us. 
His first word to the paralytic, as He looked into the 


3? 


pleading face, was “Son,” and to the woman that 
trembled before Him was “Daughter.” 

The second great principle of our Lord’s teach- 
ing is, that the filial relation is realized through faith. 
John says of the Son of man, “As many as received 
Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of 
God,” bringing men to recognize the privilege of 
sonship and to respond to it through faith. That is 
the salvation of Jesus. Nothing is more wonderiul 
than this power of faith in and over human nature. 
The faith we hold sincerely makes or unmakes us. 
A man’s whole life shapes itself according to his 
faith, as the great ship responds to the unseen 
rudder. You can do no greater service for a 
man than to fix in him faith in right things. 
Life, character, destiny, will be “according to 
that faith.” The turning point in the prodigal’s 


ty ttn yea q 


88 Tue Royarty oF Jrsus. f 


career was the point of faith when he believed in 
the sympathy and help of his father. Now, Jesus 
Christ inspired the right faith in men, faith in the 
best things. In His face men read the Gospel of 
hope, the good tidings of better things. When He 
lifted His face to the lost Zaccheus and spoke to him, 
He inspired a great hope and a mighty faith within 
him. As the little publican slid down the tree, he 
began to believe in a better future and to get hold of 
it. The woman that sank at His feet, “a guilty thing 
surprised,” saw visions of a better life as she looked 
into His face, and under His word, “Go and sin no 
more,” went forth to a new day and a new destiny. 
And this is your gospel. Leave the past, believe in 
the future, look up into the face of Jesus Christ, and 
He will help you to overtake your best self. 
Another vital principle of our Lord’s teaching 
was that love is the secret of life. Jesus set up the 
highest ideal of living, not in form so much as in 
spirit. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is 
perfect.” Does He mean, Aim at absolute perfec- 
tion? Did He come all the way from heaven to tell 
us that pious commonplace, and almost cut the nerve 
of effort by setting us such a far-away and hopeless 
standard? No, His words are nearer to us than that. 
He explains them in the illustration He gives. 


“THE Face oF Jesus CuRist.” 89 


God’s goodness is not a hard, formal goodness, but 
a living and overflowing goodness. He makes His 
sun to shine upon the just and upon the unjust. It 
overflows. So let your perfection, your virtue, your 
goodness, be not the self-poised virtue of the schools, 
not the measured virtue of legal enactment; but 
let it be a Godlike goodness that overflows. Let 
your honesty be an honesty that can overflow into 
generosity. Let your justice be a justice that can 
overflow into charity. Let your sympathy be a 
sympathy that can overflow into sacrifice. 

Morality itself is like an iceberg in the sun, 
brilliant but cold. Morality touched with sympathy 
is like a gulf-stream throwing its beneficence around 
the world. The priest and Levite passed by the 
sufferer like icebergs, with high cold thoughts of 
God and morality; the Samaritan flowed out to 
his need like a gulf-stream. So love is the healing 
of the world. 

To love is to live. Love is the fulfillment of the 
law, as the fruit fulfills the blossom. Love is the 
secret of conquest for human hearts, as morning- 
glories open, not to the frost or the night, but to the 
genial sun. Love is the secret of life; not pleasure, 
not knowledge, not power, not possession, but love, 
to respond sincerely and supremely to the highest 


go THE Royalty oF JESUS. 


things; justice, truth, charity, holiness, God; and 
to live toward one’s neighbor, not cold and selfish, 
like an iceberg, but to flow to his need like a gulf- 
stream,—that is life. And in the face of Jesus 
Christ we see love set, not in precept alone, but in 
all human relations. 

III. He illumines the Unseen World of which 
we dream. 

The hope of immortality has dwelt like a dream 
in the human heart in all ages. The history of the 
brave struggle which the race has made with death 
is written in the Egyptian pyramids and in Etruscan 
tombs. It is told in the myths of all nations. How 
complete death’s victory has been! “What medicine 
is there any for my dead child?” asked a bereaved 
mother of Gautama. “Bring a handful of mustard- 
seed,” he said, “from a house where no husband, 
wife, parent, child, or servant has died ;” and in her 
hopeless quest she learned that the living are few 
and the dead many. Now, it is said of Jesus that 
He brought life and immortality to light. It was 
but a dim hope before. Jesus makes the unseen: 
world real to us by His doctrine of the Father. 
God occupies the future and the unknown, and God 
is our Father. We can never drop out of His ever- 


“Tue Fack oF Jesus Curist.” 91 


lasting arms, for all live unto Him. To die is not 
to perish, but to go to the Father. To be with 
the Father is to be blessed for evermore. 


““Porever with the Lord!’ 


Knowing as I am known, 
How shall I love that word, 
And oft repeat before the throne, 
‘Forever with the Lord!” 


He makes the future luminous by His mastery 
of all destructive forces. At Nain, at Bethany, in 
the Garden, He was victorious over death, and lives 
to die no more. 

And withal, He has carried our humanity into 
the heavens, thus making a place for us in the 
mansions of our Father. This same Jesus shall 
come again, and we shall see Him as He is, the face 
of Jesus Christ, for we shall be like Him. On the 
Mount of Transfiguration the vision passed; Moses 
and Elias ascended to heaven, the cloud of glory 
faded away, and the disciples saw no man save Jesus 
only. But now that human appearance, too, has 
disappeared for a time, yet the Book is luminous in 
the light of His face. It reflects His personality. 
As we read it we may enter into His mind, receive 
His Spirit, and, in a sense, look upon the face of 


92 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 


Jesus Christ. Yet He will come again in His glory; 
for the perfect manifestation of God must ever be in 
the face of Jesus Christ. As David sings to Saul, 


“O Saul, it shall be 
A face like my face shall receive thee, a man like to me 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever; a hand like this 
hand 
Shall open the gates of new life to thee. See the Christ 
stand.” 


V. 
“THE BROOK IN THE WAY.” 


“He shall drink of the brook in the way:”—Psa. 
ex, 7: 


You doubtless recall the beautiful imagery of 
Washington Irving in which he compares the Hud- 
son River in the morning light, to a thread of silver 
winding its way among the hills. Well, the psalmist 
speaks of a more wonderful river, “the streams 
whereof shall make glad the city of God.” John 
describes it as a “river of life, clear as crystal, pro- 
ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” 
The prophet declares that “everything shall live, 
whither the river cometh.” In the passage before 
us we meet this wondrous stream that refreshes the 
soul in the way of high endeavor. “He shall drink 
of the brook in the way.” 

The Bible is an Oriental Book; it comes to us 
like sunlight out of the East, and shines into the 
heart of the world. In all lands the worth of water 

93 


94 THE RoYALty oF JESUS. 


is well understood, but to an Oriental it is one of 
the most precious and suggestive words of human 
speech. Water means, to him, life, prosperity, hap- 
piness. “Thou hast given me a south land, give me 
also springs of water.” So spake the daughter of 
Caleb to her father; for without the springs of 
water, even the south land was of little value. No 
wonder the Egyptians paid divine honors to the 
River Nile; for the wealth and glory of Egypt 
were in that narrow, fertile strip that stretched, like 
a green ribbon, along the banks of the bountiful 
river. When Moses would give the most impressive 
picture, to the Israelites, of that good land to which 
God was leading them, he describes it as “a land of 
brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring 
up out of valleys and hills.”” Nowhere does God 
give more fit expression to His bounty and grace 
than where He says, “I will be as the dew unto 
Israel.” 

Some impressive scenes in the history of Israel 
reveal to us the supreme value of water to those 
far-away lands. For instance, recall those days 
when the pilgrim host was marching by toilsome 
stages across the Arabian Peninsula. From Elim, 
with its twelve wells of water, they had come to 
Rephidim, panting and parched. ‘They halted at 


“Tae BRooK IN THE WAY” 95 


noonday at what they hoped would be an oasis in the 
desert, but bitter was their disappointment. They 
found no water. The pitiless Asiatic sun was flam- 
ing on them out of a cloudless sky, while only rocks 
and sand glared on them out of the bleakness of 
the desert. Their hearts sank in despair, and they 
murmured against Heaven. But Moses, with the 
tod that had reddened the Nile, touched the flinty 
rocks in mercy, and a gushing stream broke forth 
in the desert. That rock, says the apostle, was 
Christ. From the smitten Christ comes the healing 
of the world. 

Mendelssohn opens his oratorio of “Elijah” 
with the scene on Carmel. With the subtle power 
of music he voices the despair of a whole people 
perishing with thirst. First, there is heard a sullen, 
restless murmuring, which deepens and gathers 
force until it rises in terrible cumulative strength, 
and bursts forth appallingly in cries of heart-rend- 
ing and importunate agony. It is almost unbearable. 
Well, so does the soul awake to its true need, lie 
open to the heavens, famine-stricken and beseeching. 

We can understand, now, why water occupies 
such a large place in the symbolism of Scripture. 
Its suggestive imagery is not difficult to read. 
When Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, “Who- 


96 Tur Royalty oF JESUS. 


soever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but 
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give 
him shall be in him a well of water, springing up 
into everlasting life,’ He spake spiritual things, and 
in that Oriental fashion set the truth on striking 
imagery. The woman was puzzled for a moment, 
and wondered what He meant; but gradually the 
truth dawned on her. “He means to heal this 
broken heart of mine, to take away this cancer of 
remorse, to help me find God and be the true woman 
I should be. O yes! that is the living water.” So, 
when our Lord says that He will give unto us the 
water of life, eternal life, it is this that He brings 
to us: the secret, the strength, the joy of Divine 
fellowship. He does this through fellowship with 
our suffering, through sacrifice for us, through a 
new creation within us. Thus we are urged to 
have the mind that was in Him, to partake of Him, 
to receive His gift. “To as many as received Him, 
to them gave He power to become the sons of God.” 

The Psalm from which our text is taken refers 
directly to Christ. It sets forth clearly His zeal 
in service and His deep consolation in sacrifice. 
Gideon’s army in hot pursuit, not stooping and 
scarcely pausing to drink, is a picture of zeal. Sam- 


“THE Brook IN THE Way.” 97 


son, athirst, after the slaughter at Lehi, calling on 
God for water, and finding a fountain suddenly 
springing from the dry cleft, is a picture of 
the stream of God that springs up to faithful ones, 
even in unlikely places. Jesus sitting at the Well of 
Sychar, watching the woman as she speeds away in 
her new joy, and saying to the disciples, “I have 
meat to eat that ye know not of,” is a picture of both 
zeal and consolation. This, then, is our theme,— 
The Refreshing Streams that Spring up in the Way 
of High Endeavor. 

The first need of every human life is some form 
of high endeavor to give it unity, direction, and 
earnestness. As Jesus said to Martha, “One thing 
is needful.” Some one purpose must be dominant, 
else life will be distracted, troubled, a defeat. The 
higher that purpose is, the nobler the life will be. 
If one, like Mary, has chosen the good part, making 
all other duties and relationships fall into proper 
place in subordination to it, life, while still active, 
will be at the center calm and serene, a victory, and 
a growing joy. 

Next after a noble purpose there is need of 
refreshment. “Are the consolations of God small 
with thee?” “The consolations of God,’ what are 
they? Well, there are three fountains which supply 

7 


98 Tur Royatty oF JESUS. 


this “brook in the way.” From three sources en- 
during consolation may arise, to an immortal spirit: 
1. From a consciousness of worth; 2. From a con- 
sciousness of noble effort; 3. From a consciousness 
of cheerful sacrifice. These, we say, are the con- 
solations of God, they fill “the brook in the way.” 
What one is, what one does, what one endures, are 
not these the great domains of life? Out of them 
come character, destiny, joy, or shame, “the brook 
in the way,” or famine. 

I. The Consciousness of Worth. 

Let us think a few moments of this “brook in 
the way,” Consciousness of Worth. A man only 
gradually awakens to himself. 

“The baby, new to earth and sky, 
What time his tender palm is pressed 


Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that this is ‘T;’ 


But as he grows he gathers much, 
And learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘me,’ 
And finds I am not what I see, 

And other than the things I touch. 


So rounds he to a separate mind.” 


The great joy of living is just this unfolding of 
consciousness, the opening up of the soul’s life. 
We speak of growing up. Well, it is a terrible 
thing to grow old if one is not also growing up. 


“Tar Brook IN THE Way.” 99 


You know it is possible to grow old and be growing 
down all the time. There is truth in the bitter scorn 
of Locksley Hall, 


“Thou shalt lower to his level day by day, 
What is fine in thee growing coarser, to sympathize with 
clay.” 
We have all witnessed this process, growing old 
and down. It should be the other way, growing old 
and up. The beauty of youth is wonderful, the 
beauty of age should be Divine. 

The deepest root of one’s comfort or pain is in 
selfhood. What a man really is, his own heart 
must be a living fountain of joy or a fire that is not 
quenched. The glory or terror of the future life 
must be its self-revelation. In the old Greek drama 
one says to another, “O, mayest thou never know 
the truth of what thou art!’ But one must know 
the truth of what he is. In that world of light the 
hidden, smothered self is revealed. Even here a 
man has satisfaction from himself when he knows 
that he is living up, when he makes his passions 
serve his principles, when he makes his springtime 
nourish a ripe and mellow autumn, when he makes 
the present glorify the future. The consciousness 
of worth is a refreshing “brook in the way;” as, 
for instance, when a young man is frugal and eco- 


100 THE RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


nomical that he may acquire a competence and 
lift himself into independence and into a freer, 
larger life; as when a student denies himself the 
gay round of indulgence, that he may be a master 
among those who know and a leader of men; as 
when one catches a vision of the ideal world, and 
lives, for years, almost a cloistered life, under the 
vows of genius and religion—poverty, chastity, and 
obedience—that his dreams may live and bless the 
world in color or in marble. All this involves self- 
denial but it has its comfort and its joy. All 
self-denial for a noble end is a “brook in the way.” 
This is true on the lower planes of life; but when 
we rise to the moral realm its full force is seen. 
The Book is true to human nature. We are sons 
of God. Our true home is in the heavens. But 
our moral endowment has its side of terror, as well 
as joy. Wrong-doing closes the gate of a paradise 
behind us, and sends us out in loneliness, shame, 
and disgust. The curse pronounced upon the ser- 
pent seems to have fallen upon some men. They 
stand upright, it is true, but their spirits dwell in 
the dark and foul places of the earth. Their 
thoughts do not rise into the heavens, but crawl in 
the dust, their very speech is slime. When such a 


“Tue Brook IN THE Way.” Io1 


one awakens to his condition, his torture is extreme; 
he is like the prodigal among the swine. 


“Heaviest load by mortal borne 
Is the burden of self-scorn.” 


Self-scorn, to loathe ourselves, yet have to live with 
ourselves,—that is as the fire of hell. But think of 
the other side of this, the joy there is in the con- 
sciousness of worth; not of shallow Pharisaical con- 
ceit, but the deep consciousness of a sincere attitude 
of soul and an unshaken purpose. Our Lord states 
the true law of our human nature and the joy of 
high endeavor in the Beatitudes. “Blessed,” yes, 
evermore blessed, “are the pure in heart,” the 
righteous, the meek, the merciful, the holy, loving, 
and helping ones. They drink of “the brook in the 
way.” 

To live serenely we must live devoutly and 
nobly. 

“T know myself now, and I feel within me 


A peace above all earthly dignities, 
A still and quiet conscience.” 


“One self-approving hour whole years outweigh$ 
Of empty honors and of vulgar praise, 

And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels 
Than Cesar with a senate at his heels.” 


102 THE Roya.ty oF Jesus. 


When Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt, that day 
he was a king inwardly. “His mind to him a king- 
dom was” by reason of his conscious integrity; he 
drank “of the brook in the way.” Daniel went 
down into the lions’ den with a majesty of soul 
that made the place shine with a light more glorious 
than a palace. Likewise, the Son of man, for the 
joy that was set before Him, “endured the cross, 
despising the shame.” He drank “of the brook in 
the way.” 

II. Consciousness of Noble Effort. 

A second source of consolation is in the con- 
sciousness of noble effort. Work, as well as wor- 
ship, is a law of man’s nature. Neither body nor 
mind will develop properly without activity; it is 
the law of all life. 


“An angel’s wing will droop if long at rest, 
And God Himself, inactive, were no longer blest.” 


It is true of the spirit also. It must realize itself in 
achievement. One of the subtle joys of our nature 
is in the sense of worthy work well done. It echoed 
the joy of the Almighty Himself, as He surveyed 
His creative work and “saw that it was good.” 
Now, man is Godlike, and his soul can only fulfill 
itself in great achievements. We experience a thrill 


“THE Brook IN THE Way.” 103 


of joy over the completing of a great work like 
that of building a railroad across the continent, or 
laying a cable under the sea, or cutting across the 
isthmus a pathway between the oceans. In the 
same way, man has a sense of perfection. He is 
not willing to leave things partial; he aims to make 
them complete. He instinctively shuns odd num- 
bers; not from superstition, but because odd num- 
bers imply a defect, and, from a passion for 
perfection, he prefers round numbers. He will 
not guess the number in a crowd at 357; he 
will say 350, or 360. To do otherwise would 
require effort, a mental contortion. In _ the 
same way, man has a passion for the infinite. 
He protests against time. He reconstructs the 
past, and dwells in it, he forecasts the future, 
and works toward it. Eternity is in his heart 
and so this longing for some great thing to do 
is the throbbing of the infinite in us. Christianity 
does with these strong forces of nature what the 
nurseryman does with the wild fruits of the earth,— 
tames them and develops them until they fulfill 
themselves in blessing. Almost all our fruits, the 
apple, the peach, the pear, have been thus born 
again. 

Now, the great thing in which the soul fulfills 


>. 


104 THE Royarty oF JEsus. 


itself is not found in any external thing, not in any 
huge thing, but is found in some deep thing within. 
The Duke of Wellington once said that the most 
satisfying thing in life is just this sense of doing 
one’s duty. He was right; nothing less than the 
highest endeavor will satisfy the human spirit. 
Worldly honor will not; it is empty and false, said 
Chesterfield, in his old age. Wealth will not; 
the treasure of Croesus can go but a short way in 
the things of the spirit. Wisdom can not; the wisest 
of men, from Solomon to Burke, were the saddest 
of men. But listen: “My meat is to do the will of 
Him that sent me, and to finish His work.” Life a 
_ Divine gift, life a Divine service, and joy in obedi- 
ence,—that is it: “the brook in the way.” 

Perhaps one says “That will do for prophets 
and saints, who are called to special work; it is 
not the law of our common life.” It is, though. 
There is not an honorable occupation among men 
that is not, in some form, human service and Divine 
service. By these occupations men live, but by 
them they also serve. The farmer cultivates his 
field, the miller grinds the grain, the merchant dis- 
tributes the flour, others handle the bread; and so 
the world is nourished. But man does not live by 
bread alone. So builders, artisans, teachers, rulers, 


; 


“THe BROOK IN THE Way.” 105 


and the various classes, have their place and service. 
Without these co-workers, society would not endure, 
and even God’s gracious promises would halt. 
When Galileo looked through his telescope, he saw 
that this common earth of ours was moving in a 
splendid orbit. Just this, Christian faith does for 
us: it lifts the plainest life into a splendid orbit. 
Our Lord moved in a little circuit there in Judea _ 
and Galilee, but how glorious was the orbit of His 
love! You know something of this larger life of 
the spirit. You are weary, at times, in your toil; 
but when you think of the loved ones of the home 
circle nourished and blessed by your toil, you drink 
of “the brook in the way.” 

A youth, going into battle under one of those 
premonitions which sometimes cast the shadow, or 
the glory, of an event before, said, “I shall fall 
to-day.’ He was offered a detail to the rear. He 
smiled and said: “No, it is not that. I should go 
into this fight if I were to suffer a thousand deaths; 
but, boys, this is it: I shall stay by the flag while I 
live; keep the flag over me when I fall.’ When 
he received a fatal wound at the ‘close of a heroic 
day, he said, “I die cheerfully, for our cause has 
won.” He drank “of the brook in the way.” So 
Wolfe, receiving his death-wound on the Heights of 


106 THE Royaty oF JESus. 


Abraham above Quebec, learned of the flight 
of the enemy and drank of the “brook in the 
way.” Was it not this deep consciousness of noble 
effort that filled our Lord’s soul with peace 
under the shadow of the cross? “I have finished 
the work which Thou gavest me to do;” a life from 
God, for God, unto God, the consciousness of 
faithfulness, “the brook in the way.” 

Ill. The Consciousness of Cheerful Sacrifice. 

“T have shown him how great things he 
must suffer for My sake;” so God spake of 
Paul. The apostle was a great scholar, theo- 
logian, preacher; but there was a grander thing 
than that about him: he suffered great things. 
It may seem strange to you, but it is a deep 
truth of the Book and of life, that the greatest 
service of this world is brave endurance. The 
early Church was right about it, martyrdom is the 
perfect crown of service. Job was a sincere man, 
who feared God and did good; but there was a 
higher glory for Job, that of suffering, to be storm- 
swept without, baffled within, and his judgment 
taken away. The highest virtues of character, like 
pictures on china, are set in fire. 

The ministry of suffering, and it has a ministry, 
is a mystery too deep for our philosophy. Even the 


“Tur BrRooK IN THE Way.” 107 


Book of Job has no explanation. Its great lesson 
is, God is great and wise and good; let us trust 
Him. We are told that all things work together for 
good, even suffering. Just as the very mire nour- 
ishes the lily in its spotless beauty, so sacrifice 
works up into the glory of character. 

Our Lord teaches us, by precept and example, 
that the best work of life is long-range work. The 
corn of wheat that falleth into the ground, unless it 
die, abideth alone. There must be a disappearing, 
a full surrender, a dying, before there comes the new 
and larger life. Many things in life are like frost 
and snow, enemies to the flower, but friendly to the 
root. Ah, there is a stripping that is an enriching! 
It is possible to find the “brook in the way” even 
through sacrifice. It is one’s privilege to rise to the 
heavenward side of loss. 

When Horace Mann, when George William 
Curtis, through the toil and privation of years, 
without murmur or complaint, paid debts for which 
they were not legally responsible, they lived nobly 
and drank “of the brook in the way.’ When the 
father and mother, denying themselves needful 
things, toil on uncomplainingly that their children 
may be lifted into a larger life and more favorable 
conditions, as they think of their children, live for 


108 THE Royatty oF Jesus. 


their children, endure for their children, they 
“drink of the brook in the way.” 

But the most touching thing in this world to me 
is the sealed life. Ah! sealed lives—the world is 
full of them ; lives held back by one cause or another 
from their full fruition, and, as it would seem, from 
their full power; like Charles Lamb, for instance, 
whose life was a service, even a sacrifice—first to a 
weak father, then to an afflicted sister; and yet how 
brave and cheerful and human he was! Read his 
“Dream Children,” and you will know what a para- 
dise dwelt in his thought, and how deeply his life 
was sealed. And so, from one cause or another, on 
one side or another, many lives are sealed. ‘The 
thing we feel we could do, the thing we would if 
we were free, is denied us. We are held back, or 
the opportunity does not come, and our lives are — 
sealed. But even here we may find the “brook in 
the way.” God never permits a life to be sealed 
below that He does not permit it to open full and 
wide above. It is possible to look at these things, 
not in the shadow of restraint, but in the light of 
privilege. We can not do the lower thing because 
we must do the highest thing. The young man 
may not leave the farm to win his fortune in the 
city, although he is capable; but the old folks are 


“Tum BRooK IN THE Way.” 109 


failing, and he alone can nourish them. He may 
not build a home of his own, for there are invalids 
in the household. But as he plows the paternal 
acres and walks alone, he thanks God that he is 
strong to endure and able to bless. He drinks “of 
the brook in the way.” So many lives are sealed, 
but are brave, cheerful, and helpful. The way is 
narrow, but it is the way of the highest life. The 
fire kindles on the sacrifice; but the trumpets blow, 
and the heart is serene and joyous. They “drink 
of the brook in the way.” 

Our Lord’s life was a sealed life. How little of 
His heart and thought could He share! He pleased 
not Himself; He walked in isolation of soul; He 
trod the winepress alone; and yet He rejoiced in 
spirit, in His high fellowship with God, in His deep 
human sympathies, in His precious service. He 
drank of the “brook in the way.” 

We opened our theme with a vision of the Hud- 
son winding in the sunlight among the hills. Let us 
close it with a vision of that river of grace that 
flows from Paradise to Paradise, the stream of Di- 
vine Consolation. The river of Eden was parted 
into four heads. What does it mean but this, that 
God’s goodness and grace shall flow to all the ends 
of the earth? It was a bountiful and lifegiving 


110 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 


river which John saw in the new Eden. Its waters 
were free and abundant. “Whosoever will, let him 
take of the water of life freely.” What does it 
mean but this, that the highest joy of life, the con- 
solations of God, are within the reach of every one? 
Yours, you say, is a narrow life, a burdened life, a 
sealed life. Very well; but you can make it a true 
and noble life. You can be faithful in service, 
cheerful in sacrifice, and walk with God. 


“Let your high resolve sustain you, 

And ever firm faith and prayer, 

Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, 
Keep you a living soul.” 


Be true, be faithful, be Christlike, and you shall 
drink of “the brook in the way.” 


VI. 


THE GOSPEL FOR AN OPULENT CIVILIZA- 
ZATION. 


“And God said, Replenish the earth, and subdue 
it, and have dominion.’’—GEN. I, 28. 


“God, who giveth us richly, all things to enjoy.”— 
1 TIM. VI, 17. 


“But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, 
and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no 
sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” — 
LUKE XXI1, 36. 


CHRISTIANITY has conquered to the very bottom 
of human society; can it also conquer at the top? 
It has taken men from the very lowest vices, and 
lifted them up into the strength and beauty of true 
manhood ; can it enable men, as well, safely to enjoy 
and nobly use the power, and even the luxuy, of an 
opulent civilization? We believe it can, and the 
reason for our faith we proceed to state. 

At the very outset let it be admitted that a very 


Til 


II2 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 


different conception of the religious life has, at 
times, prevailed. Judaism was always a servant in 
God’s house ; it never came to the freedom and glad- 
ness of children; it never quite mastered the true use 
and worth of this natural world and of human life. 
The negative note sounded out the loudest and most 
persistent. Righteousness seemed, to the Hebrew, 
imperiled by the art, the music, the beauty of the 
world, devotion to which gave such charm to the 
old Greek life. The antagonism is well stated in 
Zechariah’s phrase, “Thy sons, O Zion! against the 
sons of Greece.” Commerce and foreign trade were 
looked upon with suspicion. The commercial alli- 
ance between the King of Judah and the King of 
Israel came to disaster upon the rocks, and the 
wrecking of the ships, the termination of the inter- 
national venture, was looked upon as providential. 
“And Jehoshaphat made ships of Tarshish to go to 
Ophir for gold; but they went not, for the ships 
were broken at Ezion-Geber. Then said Ahaziah 
unto Jehoshaphat, Let my servants go with thy 
servants in the ships. But he would not.” 

During the Middle Ages man lived enveloped 
in a cowl. He did not see the beauty of the 
world, or, if he glanced at it for a moment, 
he immediately crossed himself, and turned aside 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 113 


to tell his beads and to pray. St. Bernard 
traveled all day along the shores of Lake Geneva, 
noticing neither the azure of the waters nor 
the splendor of the mountains, with their robes 
of light and their diadems of snow, but bending 
all the while a thought-burdened forehead over 
the neck of his mule, deeply buried in his breviary. 
The mystic Tauler used to draw his cap over his 
eyes when in the country, that the violets might not 
withdraw his thoughts from his inward communion. 

The Puritan, like the monk, emphasized the 
supremacy of the moral ideal, but he did it in a 
drastic way. He did full justice to the high mas- 
teries of the religious life, its self-control, its 
moderation, its earnestness; but he never quite 
attained to its great emancipations; he did not find 
its notes of gladness and joy. Doubtless he had 
heard that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness 
thereof,” but his was only a partial inheritance; 
he starved his life and multiplied his crosses. The 
peril of abusing the world loomed so large before 
him that he scarcely attempted its full and trium- 
phant uses. He did, in his grim way, seek to attune 
the world to heavenly harmonies; but he did it, 
not by inscribing “Holiness to the Lord on the bells 
of the horses,” but by smashing them altogether. 

8 


114 THE Royarty oF JEsus. 


Now I submit that all this is very far below the 
conception of the religious life given us in the life 
of our Lord Himself, and in the teaching of His 
apostles. “I am come,” said our Lord, “that they 
might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly.” The true influence of Jesus and His 
Gospel has been in the direction, not of restraining 
life, but of increasing it, of enriching it, of elevating 
its tone, of making it strong, free, and in every way 
more abundant. It was made a reproach against 
Him that He was so much at home in this our hu- 
man world, and its busy activities and social fellow- 
ships. They missed the aloofness about Him they 
found in John. “He came eating and drinking,” 
they said, and they stigmatized Him as a “wine- 
bibber.” John the Baptist might not have added 
anything to the festivities of a wedding; possibly 
he would have frightened the guests away; but 
certainly Jesus did not spoil the feast; He saved 
its joy and re-enforced it. In that initial deed of 
kindness, sustaining and increasing its notes of joy, 
He revealed the very spirit of His mission in the 
world,—not to condemn, but to save and to fulfill 
its joy. In His farewell prayer with the disciples He 
asks not that they be taken out of the world, not out 
of home life, not out of political life, not out of 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 115 


commercial or industrial life, nor out of social life, 
but kept from the evil that may lurk in all these 
things. Neither John the Baptist, nor the medizval 
saint, nor the Puritan, struck the full note of Chris- 
tian life; for that is never a negative or partial one, 
but always a positive note, one of victory and joy. 
In St. Paul’s Epistle we find the full true note 
of the Christian life, the Gospel for an opulent civil- 
ization. “God, who giveth us all things richly to 
enjoy.” “All things are yours’—the world, life, 
death, things present, things to come—all are yours, 
and “ye are Christ’s.” Life truly centered in Christ 
may sweep over the widest horizon, “using the 
world as not abusing it.” “Let every man wherein 
he is called, therein abide with God :” “wherein he is 
called,” throughout the whole range of human rela- 
tion and activity, “therein abide with God;” not 
retreating, not compromising, not surrendering one 
jot or title of human right, but abiding there with 
God, at the very center of life’s power and posses- 
sion and glowing splendor; “abiding there” in the 
fullness of Divine life and grace, seeing all things, 
knowing all, possessing all, enjoying all, using all. 
“Whatsover ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 
The essential thing in life is not its outward form, 
nor its sharp restraints, neither its poverty, nor its 


116 THE RoyaLty oF JEsus. 


wealth—concerning which the saints have some- 
times missed their way—but in the regulating 
motive. There is a true regulating motive 
that can organize the whole of human life 
into a divine order—its widest knowledge, its 
richest treasure, its highest activities, its small- 
est details—and hold them there on line with 
the glory of God, just as the force of gravita- 
tion holds in its place, with equal accuracy, the 
tiny mote dancing in the sunbeam and the huge 
planet swinging in its vast orbit. The ancients 
sought, in all the world they knew, two things: 
one, the Elixir of Life, something to stop all decay 
within, and open there a perpetual fountain of youth, 
a flowing stream of strength and gladness in the 
human spirit; and the other, the Philosopher’s 
Stone, that turned all to gold, something that would 
dominate all the circumstances of life without, and 
turn them into higher values. Well, we have them 
both in the Gospel of Jesus: “The water that I shall 
give him shall be in him a well of water, springing 
up into everlasting life,” the Elixir of Life. And 
again; “All things work together for good to them 
that love God};” the Philosopher's Stone. All things, 
prosperity as well as adversity, health as well as 
sickness, success as well as defeat, joy as well as 


_—— 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 117 


sorrow, the fullnes of life and power as well as its 
limitations, working together for good—the Gospel 
for an opulent civilization as well as one for an age 
of stress and trial. 

We must not forget, however, the immense debt 
of Christian civilization to the dark-browed Puritan. 
For a few moments I would hold a brief for him. 
He has become the target of ridicule as his somber 
figure moves across the pages of history, and, as 
such, he has contributed in no small degree to the 
gayety of nations. For one thing, he was a man of 
great ideals. The nation is ruled, in the long run, 
by the ideals cherished in the hearts of its people. 
“We live by admiration, hope and love,” by the 
things we profoundly revere, the things we look 
forward to, the things we cling to. Better for Italy 
that the Cathedral of St. Peter’s, with its mighty 
dome, should crumble into dust than that the noble 
ideal uttered by Cavour, “A free Church in a free 
State,” should fail to rule her destinies. An eminent 
French jurist has lately expressed an opinion of 
great significance. “In recent years,” he says, “re- 
ligion has, in France, been banished from public 
life and from many private circles. From this has 
come—and I base my opinion on an experience of 
many years—a wonderful retrogression. With the 


118 THE RoyaLty oF JEsus. 


religious ideals there disappear, also, other ideals. 

Fatherland, family, duty, are then as meaningless 
as the word ‘religion.’ Nothing remains, then, but 
the struggle for material needs, for immediate exist- 
ence and crude instincts.” Now, the Puritan was 
one who had a great forward and upward look. 
When the Pilgrims sailed in the Mayflower, the 
most important freight carried on board was not 
supplies nor furniture, but the invisible freight of 
great ideals which came down to them from the 
heavens. That they might realize these, they cheer- 
fully sailed away under the stars, through lonely 
nights and on temptestuous seas. Put that down to 
the credit of the Puritan: he cherished great ideals 
of truth, of freedom, of righteousness, into the splen- 
dor of which this modern world has in some degree 
entered. 

- For another thing, the Puritan was a man of 
mighty appropriating faith; to him God was a 
present reality, a ruling force in human affairs. 
“The people that do know their God shall be strong 
and do exploits.’ The Puritan was of this type. 
His was not merely the traditional and inherited 
faith of his fathers, but a conquered faith of his 
own. He had personal transactions with God in 
his own soul, and made brave ventures on His word. 


For AN OFULENT CIVILIZATION. 119 


He heard the voice Abram heard and obeyed: “Get 
thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
from thy father’s house, unto a land which I will 
show unto thee.’’ His record is written there in 
the eleventh of Hebrews; he belongs in that list of 
mighty conquerors with Gideon, Barak, Samson, 
‘David, and the prophets, “who through faith sub- 
dued kingdoms, and wrought righteousness.” Put 
that down to the credit of the Puritan: he con- 
quered the world. 

And, then, he had the courage of his convictions, 
and relentlessly followed them to the end. He did 
not always “bathe his sword in heaven,” but he al- 
ways wielded it in behalf of humanity. He was 
lacking in fine discrimination, and sometimes re- 
sembled a “bulldog with confused ideas;” but as 
wide and as ferocious as his grasp may have been, he 
never let go his hold on the thing he felt to be right 
and true. He heroically endeavored to bring all 
mundane things swiftly into line with his heavenly 
ideals, though in so doing he threw them a bit out 
of proportion and destroyed artistic effects. He had 
the courage of a great initiative, or, as the late 
President McKinley happily phrased it on the eve 
of the Spanish War, “the courage of destiny,” step- 
ping bravely into the unknown when the light of 


120 THE Royayty oF JEsus. 


duty shone that way. It is charged that the Puritan 
robbed life of its beauty and spoiled its music; but 
he only did this because of imminent peril that 
threatened in these things, and because he was 
not himself entirely emancipated. When the 
yellow fever invades a country, communities 
maintain a strict quarantine. They throw away 
tropical fruit, no matter how inviting, because 
of the danger that lurks within it; and if the 
danger becomes especially threatening, they guard 
the frontier with guns. Now, the Puritan was 
not only a pioneer of progress, but sometimes 
its night patrol; he met evil on the utmost 
frontier, and met it with a brave front. You re- 
member how, in that country church, the congrega- 
tion, after rising to sing the hymn, turned around 
and knelt in prayer, with their faces toward the 
door and the open fields. In so doing they executed 
a Puritan movement; for the custom was originally 
a protest against bowing toward the altar and the 
image there. Now, the Puritan turned his back 
upon a good many things in life, because he be- 
lieved they were inextricably mixed with evil. His 
was not wholly a negative Gospel, but a Gospel in 
armor, and the armor was heavy. I do not share 
the feelings of Hawthorne touching the Puritan, 


For AN OPpuULENT CIVILIZATION. 121 


when he says, “Let us thank God for such ancestors, 
and let each generation thank Him for being one 
step farther away from them in the march of ages.” 
Nay; let us thank God for them, rather, and, like 
them also, bravely serve our present generation, and 
thus keep true step in the “march of ages.” 

The Puritan built himself, or rather buried him- 
self, into the future. He belonged to one of the 
geological ages of history. Those vast growths of 
the carboniferous era sunk into the earth, and, as 
coal, became treasure banked at compound interest 
against human need; and that treasure utilized, the 
life of the past turned into motive power of the 
present, lies at the bottom of the commerce, wealth, 
_and splendor of these later centuries; so the life 
and sacrifice of the Puritan nourishes and sustains 
much that is best in our modern civilization. 

But the “new wine can not be put into old 
bottles.” The astronomy of the twentieth century 
can not be the astronomy of the tenth century, 
though the stars with which they deal are the 
same. No more can the theology of the twentieth 
century be exactly that of the tenth century, 
though the truths with which they deal are exactly 
the same. Each age must apprehend eternal truth 
in new and vital ways, and in even larger horizons. 


122 THE Roya.ty OF JESUS. 


The imperative need of the twentieth century is not 
a gospel in armor, a gospel of defense and restraint, 
but a gospel in motion, in masterful touch with all 
human achievement and activity ; in a word, a gospel 
for an opulent civilization. Where shall we find it? 
Well, that question is finely answered in the Scrip- 
tures that direct our meditation; the distinctive 
note of that larger answer I take to be Dominion, 
Reconciliation, Service. 

I. First, then, Dominion: “Let them subdue 
the earth, and have dominion.” 

No chapter of human history is so enchanting as 
the one that tells of man’s steady conquest of the 
world about him. Gradually he has awakened to a 
consciousness of his royalty and of his vast realms. 
One by one he has subdued the threatening elements, 
until they own his sway and fulfill his desire. There 
is a hint of omnipotence in the way in which he uses 
the mighty forces of nature. He seems almost om- 
niscient as he opens his eyes daily upon the whole 
earth, becoming almost instantly aware of all that 
passes upon it, and as quickly making his thought 
and will potent at any point upon the surface. 

As one looks back over the track of time, the 
centuries flash out their characteristics or ruling 


For AN OPuULENT CIVILIZATION. 123 


ideas. The thirteenth, we say, was the century of 
splendor, “when knighthood was in flower.” The 
fifteenth was one of discovery, when daring naviga- 
tors pushed the horizon of the world before them 
and unveiled hidden continents. The seventeenth 
was a century of ferment. “when the new heavens 
and the new earth” began to appear. The eighteenth 
was one of revolution, when the modern world took 
form. ‘The nineteenth was the century of wonder, 
full of unexpected and far-reaching discoveries. 
Stay a moment, in thought, as its surprises and 
splendors unfold: railways and automobiles, tele- 
graph and telephone, photograph and phonograph, 
gas, petroleum and electric light, spectrum analysis, 
the Roentgen ray and radium, the liquefaction of 
air and hydrogen, the foundation of geology, the 
discovery of anzsthetics, the far-reaching, epoch- 
making discoveries of Darwin, the world-wide ex- 
pansion of commerce, industrial achievements 
beyond the dreams of Oriental romance, the vast in- 
crease of the comfort, luxury, and glory of human 
life—these constitute a veritable galaxy of marvels, 
and this is our world. This modern world, with all 
its knowledge and power and wealth and achieve- 
ment, we are to subdue. Over all its potencies we 


124 THE Royarty oF Jesus. 


are to have dominion, and make this twentieth cen- 
tury glorious in holiness and humanity. Can we do 
it? We are fond of singing, 

“Faith of our fathers, living still, 

In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword;” 
but the faith of our fathers must be tried by some- 
thing more subtle and searching than “dungeon, 
fire, and sword;” even the disintegrating and dis- 
solving forces of an opulent civilization. 

When the Pope looked upon the fair-haired 
English captives in the Roman market, and learned 
the name of their king in far-away England, Alla, 
he exclaimed, “Allelulia shall be sung there.” And 
so, in the fullness and splendor of this modern 
world, we may sing our Allelulia of triumph. But 
we will have dominion only as we truly and fully 
enter into the secret of Jesus, and enthrone within 
spiritual life and power. In every situation, in 
every human circle, at every point of opportunity, 
our Lord was thoroughly master of Himself and 
of all the potencies centering there; and this not 
through hard restraint, but through the power of a 
full, free, and joyous life. If life is strong enough 
at the center, it may be free at the circumference. 
We recognize this principle and act upon it in our 
common life. It is far better to teach the growing 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 125 


boy the right use of a horse, a boat, or a gun, than 
to discourage and enfeeble him by endless pro- 
hibitions. As he increases in intelligence, in moral 
enlightenment, in self-control, we give him more 
liberty. We make life freer at the circumference as 
it becomes stronger at the center. Ascend higher 
in your thought, and you will discover the simple, 
open secret of our Lord. The secret of Jesus is 
not poverty of means at life’s circumference, but 
fullness of spiritual power at itscenter. ‘Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind, and with all thy heart, and thy neigh- 
bor as thyself.” The life filled with the spirit of 
love will be safe, strong, and helpful everywhere; 
it will have dominion. Like a planet in the grip of 
the sun, it will move triumphantly and serenely in 
the widest orbit. Virgil takes leave of Dante at 
the gate of Paradise with the words: 


“Thus far with art and skill thy steps I’ve urged. 
Behold the sun upon thy forehead thrown! 

Thy will, henceforth, is upright, free, and sound; 
To slight its impulse were a sin: then, lord 

Be o’er thyself,—be mitered and be crowned.” 


So Christianity introduces the soul into the sunlit 
splendors of an opulent civilization with a will “up- 
right, free, and sound,” and bids it be “mitered and 


126 Tue Royatty oF Jesus. 


be crowned.” “Behold what manner of love the 
Father hath betowed upon us, that we should be 
called the sons of God, and we are.” ‘That is the 
first note of the Gospel for an opulent civilization, 
Dominion. 

II. Reconciliation is another Note of this Twen- 
tieth Century Gospel. 

And here let us release this great word “Recon- 
ciliation” from theological captivity. Sometimes 
the large, sweet Gospel of God is evaporated into 
uninviting definitions, its truths shaped into dogmas 
and doctrines which do not reveal its full scope or 
entire range of blessing. This word “Reconcilia- 
tion” is a case in point. It does mean, what they 
insisted on so mightily in the sixteenth century, the 
restoration of the soul to God; but it also means, 
and we must overtake the meaning in this twentieth 
century, the restoration of all things to spiritual 
ends and to Divine uses. It does belong to the 
beginning of the Christian life; but it continues 
throughout the whole course of that life, guiding it 
into wider horizons and interpreting its deeper 
meaning. It comes to us, not with a sword-thrust, 
but with a song of deliverance and privilege. Its 
large meaning is to harmonize after apparent dis- 
cord, to reunite after apparent estrangement, to 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 127 


restore again to sacred uses what had been wrenched 
away from divinely appointed ends. In this sense 
Paul vindicates the large charter of the Christian in 
this present world and in human life: “All things 
are yours ;” “the world,” with all its potencies, with 
all its fullness ; “life,” with all its avenues of culture, 
of joy, of blessedness. “He hath given us richly all 
things to enjoy.” There is a way, and the Gospel 
reveals it to us, in which we may fully enjoy and 
nobly use God’s great gifts to us in nature, in life, 
and in civilization. In a word, there is a Gospel 
for an opulent civilization. 

There is a reconciliation of the soul to the true 
uses of our human life. The old Manichean heresy 
of the essential evil of matter laid its restraining 
hand on the Christian life for many centuries. Men 
fled away from natural human relations because of 
an evil taint they felt to be inseparable from them. 
Spirit and matter were set in irreconcilable conflict. 
The discord within was felt to be hopeless. St. 
Paul, however, found the secret of victory : “Thanks 
be unto God, who giveth us the victory, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” “Christ liveth in me;” that 
implies not merely the restraint of life, but its high 
mastery everywhere. 

Plato compares the soul to a charioteer drawn 


128 THE Royalty oF JESUS. 


by fiery steeds: the aspirations of the soul, like a 
white steed, pulling away toward the heavens; the 
passions of the body, like a black steed, pulling away 
toward the earth. The Epicurean would throw the 
reins to the black horse, and lead a life of self-in- 
dulgence; the Stoic would throw the reins to the 
white horse, and deny the body, leading a partial 
life. In the Christian philosophy, as voiced by St. 
Paul, there is a reconciliation of forces; both horses 
are held steadily upon the course, moving harmoni- 
ously and nobly toward the divinely appointed goal. 
Christ rides with the charioteer, teaching him the 
enjoyment and the true mastery of life. 


I have a secret, Paul writes to the Philippians, 


in value far beyond the value of the Eleusinian 
Mysteries: I have been initiated into the splendid 
mastery of life. “I know how to be abased and how 
to abound;” “how to be abased,” restraining life 
where need be; and “how to abound,” holding life 
sane and true amid all opulence and abundance. 
Browning has caught the note: 


“Let us not always say, 
Spite of this flesh to-day, 
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole: 
As the bird wings and sings, 
Let us cry, ‘All good things 
Are ours, and nor soul helps more, now, than flesh helps 
soul.’” 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 129 


This reconciliaion will recover the ministry of art 
and the service of beauty to human life. There is 
a mysterious power in the world which has never 
ceased to captivate the human spirit, which appeals 
to what is highest.and noblest in us, and yet again 
to what is lowest and worst in us. The sense of 
beauty is at once the most mysterious and most 
fascinating endowment of our nature, and it yields 
to us some of the most exquisite elements of bright- 
ness and joy. A picture, a statue, a symphony, a 
poem, are among the most intellectual pleasures and 
touch our finest emotions. There is a profound love 
of the beautiful in the heart of the Creator; for it 
shines out in all parts of His creation,—in the clouds 
of the sky, on the face of the sea, and in the splendor 
of the earth. He makes the fields rejoice in the 
beauty of flowers, as well as abound in the wealth 
of harvest. When our Lord was upon the earth He 
had an open eye for its beauty. He noticed the lily 
of the field, the birds of the air, and the vine by 
the door. God himself hath appointed the ministry 
of art in human life. He endowed Bezaleel to 
devise charming work in gold, in silver, and in 
brass. Aaron’s robe was made for glory and for 
beauty. There was a touch of beauty, as well as 
5 


130 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


strength and majesty, in Solomon’s Temple: “At 
the top of the pillars was lily-work.” 

We are told, sometimes, that the spirit of Chris- 
tianity and the spirit of Art are opposed, because 
Art can not free itself from sensuous associations. 
Painters and sculptors glorify that which saints 
and ascetics have mortified. Art, it is said, magni- 
fying the ideals of human beauty, contradicts the 
spiritual ideal of holiness: “Set your affections on 
. things above, not on things on the earth.” But St. 
Paul, at Athens, surrounded by the noblest works 
of art, did not feel its antagonism to the spiritual 
ideal, but recognized art itself as unconscious wor- 
ship, and endeavored to fulfill its aspirations by 
leading those groping children of genius to a knowl- 
edge of the living God. Beauty is one of God’s 
missionaries; it awakens interest in higher things, 
and signals the way home: “For we are His off- 


” 


spring.” “Art, for art’s sake,” is a flippant phrase 
we often hear. True art must follow its own ends 
in its own way; but they must be true ends, or its 
highest gifts will be a snare. When its sole aim is 
to please and to excite mere sensuousness, it has 
begun to degenerate, and will hasten the ruin of 
States it has adorned. Frequently, great artists 


have flourished in an age of decadence. As Ruskin 


Sai 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 131 


puts it, “The names of great painters are like passing 
bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded 
the fall of Spain; in the name of Titian, that of 
Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; 
in the name of Raphael, that of Rome.” Only an 
exalted purpose can preserve art from becoming, in 
the long run, a destructive and disintegrating force. 
Now, the Christian spirit reconciles art to its true 
ideal, its large ministry, and its spiritual guidance 
in human life. 

Religion and art have their home in the 
ideal. Art is man’s effort to get nearer the 
mind of God in his work; to feel and express 
those ideals of order, balance, harmony, and 
beauty that have been wrought in the material 
universe. Religion is man’s effort to get near 
the heart of God; to feel and express similar 
ideas, truth, righteousness, and love, in the moral 
sphere. Beauty is the pursuit of both, beauty 
being the earthly shadow of holiness, and holiness 
the spiritual form of beauty. It is the mission of 
both religion and art to lead the soul beyond the 
temporal to the eternal, and they mutually sustain 
each other. The steel need not be taken from the 
blood, nor the commanding vision of righteouness 
from the soul, when the touch becomes fine, the 


132 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 


heart tender, and the eye sunny, in the world of 
beauty, light, and love. 

The Venetians felt the true mission of art when 
they wrote, in the glory of mosaic, over the great 
doorway of St. Mark’s, “I am the door.” Giotto 
felt it when he carved the same words of the Good 
Shepherd above the portal of his famous Campanile 
of Florence. He desired to let every one know, who 
might enter the little side door leading to his 
glorious snowy-pink tower, what art was to him, 
what art should be to every one—a doorway into 
the power and beauty of spiritual truth. 

III. Another Note of this Gospel of the Twen- 
tieth Century is that of Service. 

It has been pointed out, over and over again, 
how our Lord changed the ideal of life from self- 
indulgence to that of service. Nothing is more 
beautiful in all the Gospel story than the scene 
wherein our Lord re-enforced this lesson of service 
by one of the last acts of His life on earth. Jesus, 
“knowing that He was come from God and went to 
God, laid aside His garments, took a towel, and 
girded Himself, and pouring water into a basin, 
began to was His disciples’ feet.” What did it 
mean? ‘This at least, that the lowliest duties may 
be consecrated by the highest motives; that the 


For AN. OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 133 


splendor of life is in the quality of its spirit and in 
human service; that the glory of position, of pos- 
session, of ability of whatsoever character, is not 
self-exaltation, but service. 

Now, in our Lord’s words about purse, wallet, 
and sword, we have the true program of Christian 
service and Christian conquest. The resources of 
trade and commerce, the machinery of organization, 
and the forces of civil government are to be ap- 
propriated, set in motion, and directed toward the 
establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. In the 
training of the disciples our Lord led them to this 
great conception, the consecration of our common 
life, of the whole of its manifold activities, to 
human service. No element of power is to be 
abandoned, but each is to be taken, to be mastered 
and used for noble ends. Some time ago there was 
brought to light, in a church in England, an old 
picture of our Lord. It represented His blood as 
flowing over the various implements of industry, 
the reaping hook, the scythe, the shuttle, the cart, 
implying that everything wherewith we carry on 
the work of the home and the world is cleansed and 
consecrated. The first note of the Christian life is 
its inwardness; true religion is of the heart, a right 
spirit before God. The second note is, that the 


134 THE Royarty oF Jesus. 


inner quality of the life must work itself out in 
serviceable action. The third note is, that all the 
potentialities of the world and of human life, com- 
merce, industrial progress, invention, wealth, art, 
literature, all things whatsoever that constitute our 
opulent and expanding civilization, are no longer 
to be left alone, as something apart from the Chris- 
tian life, but to be taken up by it, and to be 
dominated and directed to the bringing in of the 
kingdom of God. It was said of David that, after 
he had served his generation, he fell asleep. To 
serve one’s generation it is first necessary to under- 
stand it, to appreciate its imperative need. Abra- 
ham served his generation, and all generations, by 
living faith in the living God, and built Mono- 
theism into human civilization. David served 
his generation by enthroning national righteous- 
ness. Luther served his generation by empha- 
sizing the true and simple way of salvation, justi- 
fication by faith. Wesley served his generation 
by setting in true relation the doctrine of the wit- 
nessing of the Spirit, and leading believers to their 
full privilege in Christ. Each age of high endeavor 
in the past has been an era of progress; the age of 
pietism, of polemics, of denominationalism, each res- 
cued and developed an essential element of Christian 
truth and life, to be fully realized in the final form 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 135 


of the kingdom. The age of teaching, training, of 
dicipline, has been in a good degree fulfilled, and 
the time and opportunity for large action has come. 
It is ours, in this twentieth century, to work out in 
splendor into the civilization about us, the great 
things God hath, through the centuries, worked 
into the religious consciousness of His people. We 
are to make spiritual realities visible and potent 
among men. 

Israel, at the sea, was commanded to stand still 
and see the salvation of God, to pause for the up- 
ward and forward look; then the command was 
given for an onward and triumphant movement. 
So the Church, like Israel at the sea, like the dis- 
ciples in fellowship with the Lord, has caught the 
upward and forward vision, and is summoned to 
a triumphant advance. “After that, He appeared 
unto them in another form.” Christ is always com- 
ing to His Church in a new form. He comes to us 
with a larger, fuller message. The ages past are 
not lost, but are to be fulfilled, in a growing measure, 
in our age. There is a triumphant call to a forward 
movement and a mighty impulse in that word “now” 
introducing the larger program of Christianity. 
Again, in a new way we are called to realize the 
chivalry of the cross. 

“Now let him that hath a purse, take it.” The 


¥ o. eo, 
. 


136 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 


twentieth century should be characterized by heroic, 
jubilant, and hilarious giving unparalleled, except 
by the outburst of Pentecost. “Likewise a wallet,” 
—foresight and organization. In this modern world 
of opportunity, of resource, of capacity and facility, 
there should be such an organization of Christian 
forces, such an adjustment, such equipment and 
facilities, that every human being would be touched 
and inspired by the possibilities of the true life, and 
helped in the way of endeavor. “Let him sell his 
cloak, and buy a sword.” Could human language 
be stronger? Can one imagine a more tremendous 
emphasis? Sell your last garment, if need be, at 
any price; maintain the moral purpose of civiliza- 
tion; wield the sword of civil authority relentlessly 
in the defense of truth, righteousness, and liberty; 
keep the upward path open and safe for the hum- 
blest human being. That, I take it, is the meaning 
of our Lord, the program of Christianity in this 
world, the Gospel for an opulent civilization. It is 
ours to dominate the fullness of this modern world; 
to direct its manifold forces to higher ends; to lift 
all occupations and activities into an orbit of right- 
eousness and love, until human society shines 
in holiness, and men become, however varied their 
tasks, like “singing masons building roofs of gold.” 


‘ 


For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 137 


Let us strike this note of service until it rings 
again. “He that hath a purse, let him take it.” 

Money takes hold of us in many different ways; 
its potency for good or evil is almost measureless. 
As the wise man says, “Money answereth all 


, 


things ;” it may nourish and sustain every good - 
thing; or, as the apostle declares, it may be a “root 
of all evil.”” Our Lord had more to say about money, 
about its use and abuse, than about any other sub- 
ject. He did not say so much about prayer or 
about temptation, about sin or any virtue, as about 
this. Money touches life so closely; it provides 
bread and comforts and luxuries and leisure. It 
assists the operations of merchants and manufac- 
turers and in all industrial enterprises. Upon its 
surplus science and art, in a good degree, depend. 
In the use or abuse of money lies a most subtle 
test of character. Its pursuit is one of the impera- 
tive necessities of life, and in that pursuit lurks a 
most insidious, alluring, and deadly peril. But for 
all that, shall its vast potency be surrendered to 
evil? By no means; in dominion over it the Chris- 
tian man is to win one of his noblest victories. 
There is that in the Christian spirit which will ren- 
der the soul immune from the deadly virus of 
Mammon. “They shall take up serpents, and it 


138 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 


shall not hurt them.” Moses, at the bidding of 
God, took the deadly serpent in a right fashion, with 
a wise, firm grip, and it became a shepherd’s crook, 
an instrument of defense and support. So the 
modern Christian is bidden to take the purse, to 
lay hold of wealth, and transform it from an evil 
thing in life into a defense and support of every 
noble purpose. 

“Likewise the wallet.” The world is undergoing 
a transformation before our very eyes; it is be- 
coming more and more collective, and less and less 
individualistic. Down to the nineteenth century 
the world’s work was done by muscular power, and 
every man was his own motor. Power was individ- 
ualistic, and therefore industry, life, and civiliza- 
tion were individualistic. With the subjugation of 
natural forces, the invention of machinery, and the 
establishment of swift lines of communication and 
travel, civilization became increasingly collective. 
There is centralization everywhere. Competition 
yields to combination; the one aligns himself with 
the many in defensive organization. We think and 
act now; not so much as separate individuals, but 
in battalions, federations, trusts, unions, and various 
organizations. Organization is the ruling word of 
the hour. Just that is the meaning of the wallet; 


For AN OPpuLENT CIVILIZATION. 139 


foresight, provision, organization. This is a new 
world we are in, and we need continually new 
adjustments to do the work of the kingdom in this 
generation. Christ is saying to us distinctly, “Rec- 
ognize your own age, study its social facts and 
needs; think for Me, plan for Me, organize 
for victory.”- Christianity, while not abdicating 
its spiritual function in human society, must 
concern itself, in large and vital ways, with 
all that concerns human welfare: with the home- 
life of the multitude; with the problem of poverty, 
of toil, of suffering; with the political, industrial, 
and all human rights; with the problem of 
leisure, recreation, and culture. These things 
do not constitute salvation, but are approaches 
toward the kingdom, and aid in that growing fel- 
lowship that signals the coming of the Lord. 

“Tet him sell his cloak, and buy a sword.” The 
sword symbolizes the Christian use of civil power. 
There is a use of law and government to protect 
human society, and to restrain and destroy the 
evils that corrupt it and threaten its overthrow. “I 
am come to send a sword on the earth,” said the 
Son of man; to inaugurate an irrepressible conflict 
against all evil, and to lay hold of all agencies, civil 
as well as religious, to this end. “My sword shall 


140 THE Roya.ty oF JESUS. 


_be bathed in heaven,” said the prophet; just that 
every Christian does when he flashes his moral con- 
viction in his ballot, and puts the full force of his 
personality and influence with it. “I set a great 
assembly against them,” said Nehemiah, in his 
municipal campaign in Jerusalem. 

Earth has no fairer sight, nor civilization a 
brighter hope, than a city stirred with moral indig- 
nation, with all its varied and mighty forces in line 
for righteousness. What cities might stand upon 
the earth, yea, will stand upon the earth, with every 
plague-spot swept away, with streets clean and pure, 
“more precious than gold,” and out of them driven 
everything that “defileth, or maketh a lie!” These 
things will be when Christian men take purse, 
wallet, and sword, and wield them mightily in 
human welfare. To this end we stand upon 
the earth in the fullness of this twentieth 
century, that we may subdue it and have do- 
minion; that we may reconcile its manifold gifts 
to highest ends; that we may glorify its great en- 
dowment in human service; that over this opulent 
civilization Christ may reign in triumph, until “the 
kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of 
our Lord and His Christ.” 


VII. 
THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED. 


“Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the 
inheritance with me.”—LUKE XU, 13. 


Tu living problem of our day finds a voice in 
this request of the wronged brother, “Master, speak 
‘to my brother, that he divide the inheritance 
with me.” It is the cry of the poor against the rich, 
of labor against capital, of the individual against 
monopoly. It concerns the problem of distributive 
justice, always a real one, and never more bitterly 
so than now. 

Observe, at the outset, our Lord’s method with 
questioners and with questions brought before Him. 
He directs attention, first of all, to the questioner 
himself. Indeed, to press an inquiry upon our Lord 
was often to invite a moral clinic upon one’s own 
soul. Nicodemus asks, “Master, as to Thine 
authority ?” Nay, first of all as to thine own state: 
“Ye must be born again.” The woman at Sychar 
asks, “Master, as to this mountain?’ Nay, as to 

IAI 


142 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 


that heart of thine. The disciples ask, “Master, as 
to the number of the saved?” Nay, as to thine own 
finding of the narrow way. The wronged brother 
asks, “Master, as to mine inheritance?” Nay, first 
of all, as to thine own covetousness. 

And yet our Lord never evades an issue, but 
answers every question brought before Him in the 
largest way. He answers not in our small way of 
exact statement, chopping the truth into neat and 
narrow definitions, but in His own large way, re- 
vealing the principle in which the solution lies; a 
mere hint, perhaps, but a creative word whose seed . 
is in itself, as the acorn holds the oak. 

As to the question before us, our Lord answers 
it fully by pointing out, first of all, the main root of 
social disturbance and individual unrest—covetous- 
ness. “Beware of covetousness,” of all sorts of 
covetousness, it reads. Covetousness in the rich 
withholds, covetousness in the poor robs, covetous- 
ness anywhere and everywhere disturbs. It destroys 
the peace of the soul, the harmony of social organi- 
zation, and the grace of all life. Covetousness is 
a delusion of soul that places a false estimate 
upon the power and value of mere things. Covet- 
ousness is the eager desire for possession that con-. 
sumes the higher capacities of being. Covetousness 


Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 143 


is the wing-footed haste to acquire, which defeats 
the very end of life. 

Would you know what a root of evil covetous- 
ness is in the soul of a man and in the world? 
Listen to the thunder of Sinai againt it, “Thou 
shalt not covet;’ mark the repeated warnings 
of our Lord: “Beware of covetousness;” watch 
the red lights that signal its danger in all the 
Epistles. “No unclean person, nor covetous 
man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance 
in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Would 
you survey the deadly work of covetousness on the 
soul? Consider the Scriptural arraignment of it, 


3? 


“Covetousness, which is idolatry.” You have been 
puzzled, at times, to understand the proneness of 
Israel to idolatry. Perhaps, if you will look deeply 
into your own heart, the matter will be clear. 
Idolatry is, essentially, turning away from God and 
laying hold on something visible and tangible, as 
the stay and aim of life. It is seeking life’s support, 
protection, and consolation in something else than 
in the living God. Whatever usurps the highest 
place in the soul, God’s place, dominating the life 
and absorbing the faculties, that is an idol. It may 
be art, literature, pleasure, power; it frequently 
is wealth. Idolatry was not driven from the earth 


144 THE Roya,ty oF JEsus. 


when the high places were cut down, when Olympus 
was scaled, and when heathen temples were emptied. 
Nay, the idolatry of civilized men takes on a hun- 
dred forms. Its most common form is covetousness. 

Covetousness is selfishness,—“lovers of their 
own selves, covetous,” grasping and appropriating 
things without limit and without regard to the rights 
and needs of others. ‘Lovers of themselves, 
covetous ;” haters of God and devourers of men; 
steeling themselves against the touch of pity; the 
life currents of sympathy freezing in their veins; 
the heart petrifying into stone; the whole nature a 
fossil, a flinty thing where once life was. “Lovers 


] 


of themselves, covetous;” shut up in self; isolated 
from responsive touch with any living thing in 
the universe; drifting daily out from the light of 
God and from the warmth of human sympathy. 

Covetousness is self-indulgence. Drunkenness, 
licentiousness, and covetousness are closely linked 
in Scripture; they are all forms of self-indulgence. 
The ordinary worldly nature flies for solace either 
to the pleasures of appetite or to the passion of 
acquiring. 

Wealth is potential indulgence. As the solid 
ice can be thawed into liquid, so wealth can take 
any form of indulgence. The rich man in the 


THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED. 145 


parable says to his soul, “Soul, thou hast much 
goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, 
drink, and be merry.” Covetousness is an endeavor 
to grasp and hold the possibility of unlimited indulg- 
ence in all forms of pleasure, gross or refined, 
and it gravitates downward. History shows that 
human nature generally rots in conditions of vast 
wealth and urtlimited leisure. Covetousness is often 
the upper side of beastliness, as ice is the upper side 
of the river; when it thaws out, it usually flows in 
the lower forms of seli-indulgence. 

But, you say, what has all this to do with the 
inheritance? Everything. You say it does not 
touch the question. Yes, it does, and at the very 
center. Suppose, on a winter day, when the ther- 
mometer had been for several days below zero and 
everything was crisp and snapping, you should see 
one hundred men marching out with picks and 
shovels on their shoulders, proposing to loosen the 
grip of winter and bring in the reign of summer. 
They sink their picks into the ice and say, “See how 
it opens up before us ;” but, “See, also, how it closes 
after you,” you answer. Winter, you tell them, is 
not there in the ice, but in the atmosphere. Can 
they pick it out of that? One of the conditions is 


the relation of the earth to the sun. You read the 
I90 


146 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 


parable; the cause of earth’s misery is not of earth, 
but is a spiritual one, and is found in the relation of 
the soul to God. Ah! only the Sun of Righteous- 
ness can break the grip of selfishness on the earth, 
and bring the joy of summer to this cold world. 
And so Christ speaks to the heart of the question 
and opens it to the core. His solution, the Christian 
solution, the only ‘solution of the social problem, is 
a reconstructed manhood, an elevation of the soul 
to the higher atmosphere of light and love. 

So Christ’s message to the contestants, to the 
brother wronging and the brother wronged, to the 
rich and to the poor, to capitalists and to laborers, 
to monopolists and to individuals, the same to all, 
is, “Beware of covetousnes;” the quarrel roots in 
that. 

See how this is so. The evil of the rich, as 
arraigned by the disinherited, is, in a word, oppres- 
sion. They grind the poor; they combine for the 
control of production and of markets; they fix the 
price of commodities and the scale of wages; they 
direct legislation, enthroning iniquity by a law; 
they control transportation; they poison the foun- 
tains of justice; they take advantage of their power 
and opportunity, and are oppressive. Why? Be- 
cause of covetousness. It is covetousness that puts 


THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED. 147 


the false estimate on the worth of mere things; that 
consumes the higher faculties of the soul and 
hardens the heart; that, in its mad fury of acquisi- 
tion, treads down humanity, crushing the bodies 
and brutalizing the souls of men. 

The evil of the wronged and injured is 
violence. It appropriates and consumes all in 
its path, as in the Reign of Terror, in the 
Paris Commune, and in frequent strikes and 
riots. Why? Because of covetousness, is the 
true answer. The movement may start with a 
grievance, but often exceeds it far enough, because 
of covetousness, a supreme estimate of the worth of 
things, a determination to have at any cost, or to 
destroy what one can not enjoy. Covetousness is 
the main root of social disturbance, whether it works 
from above in oppression, or from below in violence. 

Let us not forget here that a firm protest against 
wrong, a manly resistance against injustice, is al- 
ways right. Let us remember that where our Lord 
spoke one word of warning to the poor, he spoke a 
hundred words of blazing judgment against the un- 
just rich. That poor criminal in the jail, or the one 
hanged yesterday, may be no worse in the eyes of a 
just God than the thieving millionaire, who, by a 
corrupt use of money, has bought legislation, dis- 


148 THE Royayty oF JEsus. 


organized legitimate trade, and forced combinations 
that betray every human right; nor than that much 
envied monster, who lives in a palace while he levies 
an unjust and merciless tax on each bushel of coal, 
on a sack of flour, on a yard of cloth, or whose 
selfish grasp throttles the life of a town. They are 
alike criminals, with the advantage in favor of the 
ones in prison or on the gallows. The point I make 
is, that mere poverty gives no man a title to the 
kingdom of heaven, and that mere wealth excludes 
no one; character determines that alike in rich or 
poor, and also this, that covetousness is a root of 
violence as well as of oppression; and the message 
to each is pertinent: “Beware of covetousness.” 
Again, our Lord answers the question by expos- 
ing the delusion of covetousness. “A man’s life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which 
he possesseth.” Observe here these things: the 
fine contrast between life and things, and the close 
relation between them, and catch the emphasis 
placed on the word “abundance.” Let us be careful 
about our distinctions here. Liberty, for instance, 
is a fine thing, license is an evil thing; but license is 
simply an exaggeration of liberty. Justice is a fine 
thing, vengeance is an evil thing; but vengeance 
is simply an exaggeration of justice. So possession 


Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 149 


of materal things is good, and covetousness is 
an exaggeration of it. While in this moral life we 
are prisoners of nature, we are dependent upon her, 
and the necessity for material things is real. God 
so recognizes it. “Your Heavenly Father knoweth 
that you have need of all these things.” Material 
things, therefore, nourish life, but can never 
“measure it. “The capital error of the world lies in 
its supreme faith in material good to measure and 
realize the full meaning and glory of life, that, after 
all, it really consists in abundance; and the unrest, 
- the strain, the friction of life spring mainly from this 
desire for a surplus, for abundance rather than 
necessary things. “Our Lord exposes this delusion 
of covetousness. Life is related to things, but ex- 
ceeds them. ; 
Some words are like Jacob’s ladder, they extend 
up from earth to heaven. Life is one of these. In 
the order of nature, life means sensation; man lives 
by bread there. In the order of intelligence, life 
means thought; man lives by knowledge there. 
In the order of spirit, life means love; man lives 
by sympathy there, sympathy Divine and human. 
So, while life in its lowest form has a limited, 
though real, need of material things, the mere 
abundance of these can neither prolong, increase, 


150 THE Royatty oF Jxsus. 


nor exalt life. Life has its duration, its quality, its 
blessedness, from higher sources; it consists not 
in mere abundance of things. 

Physical life does not consist in the abundance 
of things; in the small portion, rather, that can be 
appropriated and assimilated. ‘The mere abundance 


frequently destroys. Alexander the Great gathered 


up all his success and joy in a carousal of wine, and 
died on the spot. Attila the Hun drowned himself 
internally with honey-water on his wedding-day. 
Hardicanute died in an inglorious attempt to eat all 
the supplies at a wedding-feast. He could rule 
England, but he could not eat all the food of the 
realm. 

Mental life consists not in the abundance of 
things. Money can not buy a faculty, a taste, a 
feeling. These things spring not from the earth; 
they are from above. Sydney Smith proposed as a 
motto for the Edinburgh Reviewers, “We cultivate 
literature on a little oatmeal.” The motto will 
serve for all Scotland. Plain living and high think- 
ing has kept her head clearer than her climate, and 
made her an intellectual leader. Was it not better 
to be Socrates, poor in Athens, with great thoughts 
that fill the world, than Cleon, rich and sordid? 
Was it not better to be St. Paul, a prisoner in the 


. 
ae 


Tuer Cry OF THE DISINHERITED. 151 


old Roman jail, yet a king of the centuries, than 
Nero, in his Golden House and beastliness? Was 
it not better to be blind old Milton, with his great 
thoughts of God and man, than a noisy roisterer, 
rotten to the core, though decked in lace and gold 
and masquerading as a lord? 

Spiritual life consists not in the abundance 
of things. The flower roots in the earth, 
and yet opens, in beauty and fragrance, to 
the sky. So is man. He has a narrow 
touch with the earth, but great exposure to 
the heavens. Our Lord makes a strong contrast 
between a man who heaps up things for himself 
and is not rich toward God. “Rich toward God;” 
that is, responsive to all that is high, glorious, and 
enduring. One of the most impressive facts of 
history is the close touch which poverty in material 
things often has with its rarest mental and spiritual 
wealth. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, were poor; 
but how rich, responsive toward life and song! 
’ Angelo, Giotto, and Murillo, were poor, perhaps; 
but how rich toward beauty and art! Moses, 
Isaiah, John the Baptist, were poor indeed; but 
how rich, responsive toward God! What a world 
of comfort there is in the fact that the best of 
life is at the top, touched indeed by things, but 


pie oats 
“ } 


not measured by them! Notwithstanding poverty, 
wrongs, and defeats, the higher and the truer 
life may still go on and up. Even here, “upon 
this bank and shoal of time,” we may catch the step 
of the immortals. 


152 THE RoyALty oF JESsus. 


But, one says, that is just the way with you 
preachers: you take refuge in eternity. You say to 
the wronged man, “Be patient, brother, you shall be 
happy by and by, when you are dead.” Speak to 
the living question like a man, What about the 
inheritance? Our Lord gives a third answer to the 
question by indicating His relation and the relation 
of Christianity to political and social problems: 
“Man, who made Me a judge or divider over you?” 
Our Lord’s words are always wonderful because 
of what they say, and because of what they compel 
us to think. Sometimes, like a catapult, they hurl 
us into the very center of things. 

This man had a grievance; he felt it keenly. 
He interrupts a discourse on the last judgment, that 
the Messiah may give undivided attention to his 
wrongs. He has lost money and he would have 
the brakes on the universe until he finds it. Let us 
not be too harsh. We all feel our personal wrongs 
sharply. “The curse ne’er struck my tribe till now,” 
wails Shylock, as his ducats and his daughter dis- 


THE Cry OF THE DISINHERITED. 153 


appear at once. God’s silence and delays are painful 
trials to us. 

In the case before us, our Lord declines to 
interfere. Why? Is He indifferent to human 
wrongs? Nay, but because He is occupied with 
wrong in a larger way, revealing principles and im- 
parting influences which will redress all grievances 
and pluck up every root of evil. “My kingdom is 
not of this world,’ He said. Not in aim or method, 
still it is in this world and is very busy with it. 
Observe, the very words of our Lord's answer 
indicate to the inquirer how utterly he had misunder- 
stood the nature of Christ’s mission and kingdom. 
The answer recalls a scene recorded in Exodus, 
doubtless familiar enough to the complaining one, 
where Moses interfered, suddenly and mightily, in 
behalf of a wronged brother; but on the morrow, 
this very victim of injustice becomes himself an 
oppressor, repudiates the interference of Moses in 
behalf of justice, in a stinging protest, “Who made 
thee a prince and a judge over us?” A sudden, or 
even violent, use of power will never satisfactorily, 
or finally, redress the wrongs of this world. The 
evil lies too deep for that. The fault of Moses was, 
too eager haste in setting about his task by the 
swift use of power, a mistaken estimate of the 


154 Tue Royatty oF Jesus. 


human material with which he had to deal, and, 
above all, lack of true insight that the deep taproot 
of all the variance and discord of the world is in a 
spirit of evil in the human heart itself. This spirit 
of evil is never driven out by violence, and never 
yields to any mere human adjustment; it only yields 
to the might of love and the transformation of 
spiritual forces. “Not by might, nor by power, but 
by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.” Our Lord 
is saying here, in substance, what He said to His 
own disciples when they would call down fire upon 
the inhospitable Samaritans: “Ye know not what 
spirit ye are of.” To those who complain of the 
tardiness, the inefficiency and apparent lack of sym- 
pathy of Christ and His Church in relation to social 
injustice, the answer is the same. To rush in with 
carnal weapons would end only in bitter failure; 
only the spiritual transformation of human nature 
will work an enduring cure of human ills, and this 
process of spiritual transformation is, for the most 
part, long-range work. 

For all our Lord’s refusal to right that particu- 
lar wrong, He is, by the might of spiritual forces, 
a judge and a divider among men in the largest 
sense. He illuminates the intellect, He enthrones 
righteousness in the conscience, He breathes love 


THe Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 155 


within the heart; and in so far as courts of justice, 
legislatures, commercial, social, and industrial insti- 
tutions and customs yield to these things, Christ 
reigns and is a judge and divider among men. 
Christianity touches this world, therefore, not as an 
absolute power above it, and without it, but as a 
transforming power within it. Those Socialist 
agitators are wrong who complain of Christianity 
because it does not interfere with the social order 
in a direct and violent way. ‘The answer is, it is 
influencing the social order in a much larger and 
more positive and enduring way. The language 
of our Lord to Simon in Gethsemane was the word 
of Victor Emmanuel to Pope Pius IX in Italy, and 
is always the message of God to His Church: “Peter, 
put up thy sword.” The weapons of our warfare 
are not carnal, but spiritual and mighty to the pull- 
ing down of strongholds. The stronghold of human 
wrong is spiritual, and is within. Within is the 
source of sensualism, brutal and devouring; within 
is the source of covetousness, cruel and insatiable; 
within is the source of that human selfishness which, 
with all its elegance and refinement, is often hard 
and pitiless and consuming. 

Jesus Christ is the only one in all the centuries 
who has attacked wrong in its real stronghold. He 


156 Tue Royaty oF JEsus. 


said, “I beheld Satan falling from heaven.” What 
is that? Worldliness driven out of His own Church, 
as He once whipped it out of the Temple. Iam with 
the Socialists this far: Let every Church show her 
credentials of healing and helpfulness, or let her 
surrender the name of Christ and be rolled up like 
Judaism. The well-known parables of the leaven 
and of the mustard-seed clearly reveal the relation 
of our Lord’s kingdom to the world. The leaven 
indicates its inner transforming power, the mustard- 
seed its outer organizing power. “The kingdom of 
heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and 
hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was 
leavened.” The chief elements of man’s misery and 
degradation are sin, selfishness, and ignorance ; these 
are within, and can be counteracted only by that 
which works within. The very fountain-head must 
be reached, if the stream is to be made pure. 

When the prophet Elisha was told of the pois- 
oned waters of Jericho, we read that “he went 
forth into the spring of the waters, and cast the salt 
in there,” and the waters were healed. Now the 
leaven, like the salt, symbolizes a new force working 
within. Leaven is a subtle, searching, and mighty 
force, laying hold of the very life of that which it 
touches, transforming it and imparting new qualities 


Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 157 


to it entirely. So the Spirit of Christ, a new and 
mighty force, enters the human heart, and lays hold 
of all its hidden energies of thought, of aspiration, 
of affection, of volition, and transforms them, 
giving to them entirely new qualities. In a word, 
Christ makes the whole man new, through and 
through, and, by means of the new man, reaches 
out and penetrates into all the circles of human 
activity, subjugating and assimilating unto Himself. 
Then shall justice and mercy prevail in all human 
affairs, because Christ reigns within, and the “whole 
earth shall shine with His glory.” 

~ “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of 
mustard-seed.” ‘That points to the organization of 
human institutions, political, commercial, industrial, 
and social, on the lines of the kingdom of God. The 
spirit of holiness and love within must work out in 
large and beneficent institutions. “The mustard- 
seed, which indeed is the smallest of all seeds, but 
when it is grown, the birds of the air lodge in its 
branches.” At a time when the morality of the 
world was at its very lowest ebb, and sociey seemed 
rotten to the core and all hope of human welfare 
dead, Jesus of Nazareth came quietly forward from 
the seclusion of a carpenter’s shop, and declared, 
with a calm, authoritative confidence, that the strife 


158 THE Royaty oF JEsus. 


and discord, that the greed and competition around 
were all wrong; that the true spirit of life was a 
spirit of love and harmony and mutual helpfulness. 
Love, He declared, was the very heart of God, and 
the only hope of the individual and of society. He 
declared that men would yet yield to this wondrous 
power of love, and would no longer fight one 
another, but would’ work with one another, and 
build God’s kingdom on the earth. How very 
strange, distant, and impossible the ideal seemed! 
It dropped into a suffering and hopeless world, 
like a tiny mustard-seed into the earth. How mar- 
velously it has grown and spread its sheltering 
branches to the oppressed of the world, I ask old 
Time to tell. Steadily it has invaded one department 
after another of human life, and reorganized it along 
lines of the kingdom. It has abolished slavery, 
though it was eighteen hundred years in doing it. 
Gradually, through the centuries, it has enthroned 
equity and just representation in civil government. 
Constantly its influence has been at work, humaniz- 
ing the relations between rich and poor, between 
capital and labor; this achievement will be realized, 
though it require another thousand years to do so. 
The principle of human sympathy and Christian co- 
operation has, in our own day, challenged the prin- 


Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 159 


ciple of conscienceless and murderous competition, 
and set the seal of death upon it. In a little while 
the ideal of true human equation and mutual co- 
operation will not be kept out of any business; it 
will come into every factory; it will stand at the 
center of every mart; it will take its place at the 
desk of the merchant, and will be as busy as any 
broker on the exchange. Competition, up to a 
certain point, is a beneficent spur to enterprise ; but 
unlimited, becomes murderous. At that point, under 
the law of self-preservation, it issues in monopoly. 
Monopoly, growing more and more grasping and 
remorseless, becomes an intolerable burden; at that 
point a mighty conviction of justice and humanity, 
born of the spirit of the Gospel, will compel its 
issue, in manifold forms of larger co-operation, for 
the benefit of the many rather than the few. In 
other words, human society is undergoing a Divine 
evolution; it is steadily and inevitably being reor- 
ganized on the basis of love, and the evolution will 
go on until human society becomes a true city of 
God, into which nothing shall enter which “defileth 
or maketh a lie.” True Christian civilization will 
yet defend every human right, and shelter every 
human need, and our Lord Jesus Christ will yet be a 
“judge and a divider among men,” not by the power 


160 THe RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


of any external circumstances, but by the principle 
of love enthroned within. 

“And lo, in the midst of the throne, stood a lamb, 
as it had been slain.” Love is the dominating, co- 
ordinating, saving principle of human society. It 
is to penetrate into all circles of human activity, 
political, commercial, industrial, social, and blend 
all into a spiritual unity. A new order will yet 
obtain upon this common earth, when love will 
dethrone selfishness, when all things will be sub- 
ordinated to highest ends, when individualism will 
be glorified in common service, when each shall 
come to his own true, full inheritance, and Christ 
shall be Lord indeed. © 

“Go, tell the great world the glorious tidings, 
Yes, and be sure each bondman hears; 


Tell the oppressed of every nation, 
Jubilee lasts a thousand years.” 


VII. 
THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 


“And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of 
God, and the song of the Lamb.” —REv. xv, 3. 


“The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth 
came by Jesus Christ.’-—JouN 1, 17. 


St. JoHN, the Divine, is the greatest of all poets: 
gteater than Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare; for he 
gives profound truth expression through the large 
and flaming utterance of the imagination. There 
are many ways of expressing a truth; it may be built 
into a noble structure, cast into bronze, or chiseled 
in marble; it may be set in glowing colors on can- 
vas; it may vibrate in the thrilling tones of music; 
it may live and move before us in the form of 
dramatic action. The last mode of expression is 
the most enduring and far-reaching. Marlborough 
was accustomed to say that all he knew of English 
history he learned from Shakespeare's plays. Cer- 


tainly, at the touch of the great dramatist, the heroic 
II 161 


162 THE RoyaLty oF JESUS. 


actors and eras of English history start into life. 
Our Lord cast much of His teaching into the form 
of dramatic action. The sower, as he takes his long 
strides over the Judean hills; the shepherd, pushing 
his way into the night and the storm; the good 
Samaritan, relieving distress on the highway; the 
prodigal, turning home,—these are as real to us as 
the men we meet daily on the street. Now, in the 
Book of Revelation we have the great truths of the 
Gospel presented through the imagination, in the 
form of dramatic action. These wondrous truths,— 
the age-long conflict between good and evil, involv- 
ing all nations, races, and generations of men; evil 
in alliance with all the forces of the world and all 
phases of human development; with the ignorance, 
the superstition, and beastliness of heathenism, and 
with the culture, pride, and refined selfishness of a 
polished civilization; the cost of human redemption 
in the sorrow, the agony, the breaking heart of God 
Himself; the royalty of the risen and triumphant 
Jesus, wearing all keys at His girdle, and guiding 
all isssues to a far-off divine event; the final victory 
of righteousness and love; the unfolding glory of 
the redeemed; the peace, the fullness, the joy of the 
blessed life,—these are the things writ large in the 
flaming pictures of the imagination. The very uni- 


Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 163 


verse is taxed to supply imagery for the expression 
of the great reality of spiritual conflict and victory. 
Sun, moon, and stars; clouds, thunder and light- 
ning ; the four winds of heaven; the floods, the sea; 
the islands, the mountains, the rocks; the earth- 
quake, the bottomless pit, the fiery lake; eagles, 
scorpions, dragons; mourning, famine, death; the 
serpent, the lamb; the forces of nations in mighty 
exhibition; travail of birth; cities, temples, and 
altars; kings and queens, angels and men,—all 
these, in swift and terrific action, picture the story 
of human progress and redemption. 

In the Book, the drama of human destiny moves 
across the stage of time with all forces, human and 
Divine, in full activity. Through its pages we listen 
to the grand symphony of heaven and earth, where 
all the instruments meet in jarring notes of thunder- 
ous discord, and later unite in glorious harmony, and 
at last die away in melodies of fathomless peace and 
joy. After the thundering cataract of Niagara and 
the roaring, grinding rapids, corne the placid waters 
of Ontario, calm and serene as a sea of glass. So 
the new order appears. We behold a city lying four- 
square, with walls of jasper, gates of pearl, and 
streets of gold, watered hy the River of Life, and 
nourished by the Tree ot Life, and the inhabitants 


164 Tue Royatty oF JEsus. 


thereof, crowned and radiant, joining in songs of 
deliverance and joy. “And I heard, as it were, the 
voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many 
waters, and as the voice of many thunderings, say- 
ing, Allelulia! for the Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth.” “And I saw, as it were, a sea of glass, 
mingled with fire, and them that had gotten the 
victory over the beast, stand on the sea of glass, hay- 
ing the harps of God. And they sing the song of 
Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the 
Lamb.” 

The Book of Revelation is, therefore, the great- 
est poem of the ages, the Epic of Redemption, as 
Dante’s “Divina Commedia” is the epic of the 
Middle Ages. I do not deny the profound realities 
with which it deals, I only insist that those realities 
must be approached through the gateway of the 
imagination. Some books must be read with the 
intellect in the ascendant; as, for instance, Adam 
Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” Some must be read 
with the heart in the ascendant, as Tennyson’s “In 
Memoriam ;” and some with the imagination in the 
ascendant, as Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” ‘The 
Book of Revelation belongs to this last order, and 
must be similarly read. 

The botanist makes one use of the flower as he 


Sone oF Mosrs AND THE LAMB. 165. 


tears it apart and analyzes it. The chemist makes 
another use of it as, in his laboratory, he extracts its 
gift of odor. But the humming-bird makes yet 
another use of it, as, poised in air, with melodi- 
ous song, he draws the nectar from the living flower. 
I do not deny the mines of wealth the Book yields 
to the scholar’s analysis, or to the theologian’s 
interpretations. Ours, at present, is the task of the 
poet, or of the musician, 


“To catch the sweet, though far-off hymn 
That hails a new creation.” 


How are we to understand this large poetic 
utterance? What is it that constitutes the song of 
a man’s life, that lifts his whole being into true 
harmony and music? Well, it is the masterful 
impulse within him, the dominant ideal toward 
which he steadily moves, the inflexible pur- 
pose, deeply fixed, drawing all the forces of 
his being into sublime unity, and directing 
all his energies and activities to some great 
end. Scatter a handful of sand on a ghass plate, 
and let a violin be played softly near by. The 
grains of sand immediately arrange themselves into 
regular figures; they organize to music. So every 
man’s life has its dominant note; his thoughts, ener- 


166 THE ROYALTY OF | JESUS. 


gies, and acts organize to its music. If one can get 
this keynote of a man’s life, the deepest thing in 
his thinking, feeling, and aspiration, he can read 
his music and write his song. Everything in nature 
has its keynote,—the sea, the wind, the roar of 
traffic, the hum of industry. It is so in human life; 
the dominant note reports itself. Tennyson makes 
the Northern farmer respond to but one considera- 
tion, that of property. The pounding of the parson’s 
fists upon the pulpit, and the clatter of his horse’s 
hoofs upon the road, start no other ideas: 


“Coom up, proputty, proputty,—that’s what I ’ears ’im 
hla proputty, proputty—canter an’ canter away.” 
When Hamilcar led the boy Hannibal to a 
Carthaginian altar and made him swear eternal 
vengeance to the Romans, he struck the keynote of 
that daring and militant life; its music sounded out 
on Alpine summits and before the gates of the 
beleaguered city. When Cesar declared that he 
would rather be the first man of a shepherd village 
than second man in Rome, he sounded the keynote 
of his life, and we hear its music in his campaigns 
in Gaul and in his contest with Pompey. When 
the shoemaker, Carey, sat on his bench, in England, 
pounding pegs into shoes, with a map of the world 


Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 167 


before him, he heard the call of the benighted 
millions, and in his great resolve to go to them he 
struck the keynote of his life. Sydney Smith said, 
sneeringly, that the cobbler had gone to India ‘to 
push the Himalayas into the sea. Well, the 
Himalayas of ignorance, superstition, and sin are 
moving toward the sea, and they are moving 
to the music of the cobbler’s hammer. John Wesley 
struck the keynote of his life in that great saying of 
his, “The world is my parish,” and the music of his 
hymns greets the dawn as it breaks on the round 
earth. They buried a man on a hill in South 
Africa, not many years ago, Cecil Rhodes, who, they 
say, thought in continents. The song of his life 
was to rescue Africa, the whole of it, from Cape 
Town to Cairo, for England and civilization. Well, 
another man died in Africa some years before, 
Livingstone, who also thought in continents ; but the 
song of his life was to lift the Dark Continent into 
the light and glory of the kingdom of God. 

This, then, is the song of a human life, the 
purpose that organizes, dominates, and directs it. 
With this in mind, let us turn again and listen to 
the song of Moses as it comes to us out of the 
past. Listen, now, to the song of the multi- 
tude when Israel had passed through the divided 


168 Tur Royatty oF Jesus. 


waters, and later “saw the Egyptians dead upon 
the shore.” “Then sang Moses and the chil- 
dren of Israel this song unto the Lord: I 
will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed 
gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He 
thrown into the sea. . . . Who is like unto 
Thee, O Lord! glorious in holiness, fearful in 
praises, doing wonders? The Lord shall reign for 
ever and ever.” With timbrel and song they cele- 
brated the triumph of righteousness, the absolute 
reign of the living, the mighty, the holy God. 
And,-again, Moses set the same truth to music 
at the close of his life. One of the last things he did 
before he went up to the vision of Pisgah, was to 
write a song for Israel. “The Lord said to Moses, 


Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this - 


people will forsake Me, and break My command- 
ments, and go after strange gods. Now, therefore, 
write this song, and teach it to the children of Israel ; 
put it in their mouths, that this song may be a wit- 
ness for Me against the children of Israel. Moses, 
therefore, wrote this song the same day, and taught 
it to the children of Israel: Give ear, O ye heavens, 
. and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of 
my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my 
speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon 


Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 169 


the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: 
because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe 
ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, His 
work is perfect; for all His ways are justice; a God 
of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.” 
The reign of the living God, the supremacy of 
a moral order in the world: that was the song of 
Moses. ‘To establish this truth in the heart of 
Israel and, through Israel, to make it dominant 
throughout the world, was the purpose, the music 
of his life. We tell the story of his life, and sound 
its keynote when we name him the Lawgiver. He 
was the world’s greatest legislator. No matter 
what he owed to Babylon, or what he brought up 
~ out of Egypt, under the providence of God he laid 
the broad and enduring foundations of human so- 
ciety. Only that civil order can be permanent that 
rises on lines drawn by Moses. ‘True progress is 
but the approach of civilization to the great ideal 
first revealed by Moses, the nations learning his 
song as Israel learned it, the supremacy of moral 
law in the world, the place of truth and justice in 
human life. 
When the Israelites were led by Moses out of 
Egypt they were separate, distinct as grains of sand, 
having neither ideal, regulating authority, nor 


170 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 


efficient organization. But under the chatisement, 
discipline, and teaching of the wilderness, they 
touched the living God and awoke to the quality of 
righteousness. They learned the song of Moses, 

~ the supremacy of a moral order in the world, and, 
keeping step to that music, grew into a great nation. 
The glory of Israel and its far-reaching influence in 
human history lie hidden there, in that moral dis- 
cipline. This song of Moses is almost the marching 
song of the nations as they advance through the 
centuries toward a higher civilization. 

Take up, now, the Magna Charta and the Bill 
of Rights of England, out of which her glory and 
dominion spring, and as you read them you catch 
the song of Moses, the supremacy of moral law and 
fair human justice, before which even kings must 
bow. The first sentence of the Declaration of 


Independence, drawn by the Continental fathers, | 


strikes the keynote of this song of Moses,—the 
supremacy of moral law over all political authority, 
whether it be that of England or of Egypt. “We 
hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are 
created equal; that they are endowed by their Cre- 
ator with certain unalienable rights, that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 
Human rights and duties, those daring men held, 


Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 171 


are not determined by the political arrangements of 
earth, but by ideal and moral relationships guarded 
in heaven. 

We catch the same music in the thunder of battle 
before the gates of Port Arthur and out on the Sea 
of Japan. Japan is teaching Russia the full notes of 
the song of Moses, the supremacy of moral law, 
the meaning of truth and justice between nations 
as between man and man. It is the beginning of a 
great era in the history of any people when they 
catch the keynote, distinctly and anew, of a moral 
order, and reorganize their life, industry, commerce, 
and politics according to its sublime music; when 
they learn aright the song of Moses. 

This song of Moses emancipates the human 
spirit from the captivity of nature. The play of 
the mighty, uncontrolled forces of the universe 
filled the ancient world with terror. Man was 
helpless before them, the sport of chance and 
caprice. He felt himself but a helpless victim in 
the grip of relentless fate. As in Egypt, he multi- 
plied gods, darkening his mind with superstition, 
and burdening his life with religious rites. Nor 
has modern science, with all its knowledge, suc- 
ceeded in setting the captive free. It has no power 
of itself to lift our feet from the “miry clay” of a 


172 THE RoyaLty oF Jesus. 


natural order ; it does not set our feet on the rock of 
certainty, with a new song in the mouth. True, it 
widens our horizon, but only to deepen our despair. 
It makes much of the reign of law, but has no 
vision of the Lawgiver; it sees no hope above, nor 
light beyond. Certainly it is only of science, that 
has broken from its theistic moorings and denies 
the living God, that this is true; but I am drawing no 
exaggerated picture. It was not an Egyptian nor 
a Greek, but a contemporary poet, who wrote thus 
reproaching nature: 
“Thou art not calm, but restless as the ocean, 
Filling with aimless toil the endless years, 
Stumbling on thought and throwing off the spheres, 
Churning the universe into mindless motion. 
Thou crownedst thy wild work with foulest wrong, 


When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal, 
And darkly blundered on man’s suffering soul.” 


What! is man’s soul nature’s blunder? Well, if 
there be no living, personal, righteous God, who 
rules all and guides all, most certainly man’s soul is 
nature’s blunder. “I do not hesitate to express the 
opinion,” wrote Mr. Huxley, near the close of his 
life, “that if there is no hope of a large improvement 
of the condition of the greater part of the human 
family, I should hail the advent of some kindly 


Sonc oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 173 


comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, 
as a desirable consummation.” On reading that, 
one thinks of Laocoén, writhing in the coil of the 
serpent, and lifting a pleading face towards the 
silent heavens. 

Such is the majesty of the soul, however, that in 
its higher moods it chafes under this ball and chain 
of doubt and unbelief. When Professor Tyndall 
stood on the summit of the Matterhorn, where few 
have stood before or since, and looked out on a 
billowy ocean of ice and snow radiant in the morning 
sun, he felt the inadequacy of materialism, and 
longed for a living faith in the living God. Now, 
Moses broke this prison-house of things, and saw 
the living God, and made Israel to know Him. 
There, at the burning bush, the living God, the 
source of all life and potency and present on every 
spot of earth, revealed Himself to Moses, and 
clothed him with power. In Egypt, Israel saw the 
mighty works of the living God, and all along the 
desert way he guided them and nourished them. 
The sea fled at their coming, the heavens gave 
bread, and the rocks gushed with water. The laws 
of nature were no longer, to them, blind, unintelli- 
gent forces, but became the “everlasting arms” of a 


174 THE Royalty oF JESUS. 


Father, and they sang the song of Moses, a song of 
triumphant faith, of thanksgiving and tumultuous 
praise. 
“When Israel, of the Lord beloved, 
Out from the land of bondage came, 


Her fathers’ God before her moved, = 
An awful guide, in smoke and flame.” 


The song of Moses, the certainty of a moral 
order in the world controlling all events, great and 
small, gives unity to history and hope in human 
struggle. If some time, somewhere, righteousness 
shall not prove itself to be the regulating and 
dominating force in human affairs, life is indeed a 
tragedy. If human selfishness, greed, ambition, 
and caprice are to reign forever, unchecked and 
supreme, then society will grind on its downward 
way to chaos. Sometimes it is exceedingly difficult 
to recognize a moral order in human affairs. God 
Himself seems to have abandoned the field. When 
Moses fled, a fugitive, from Egypt, he carried into 
his loneliness no triumphant song of faith; he had 
not yet learned it. To the Tishbite under the 
juniper-tree, the human outlook was very dark. 
John the Baptist, the strong man of his generation, 
was, for an instant, like “a reed shaken with the 


Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 175 


wind.” “Art Thou He that should come, or do 
we look for another ?” 
“O it is hard to work for God, 
To rise and take His part 


Upon this battlefield of earth, 
And not sometimes lose heart.” 


During the long night of Egyptian captivity, 
a space of four hundred years, the prayers and tears 
and heartaches of Israel seem to go for naught. 
In every generation and in every heart the bitter 
question would arise, Does God know, or see, or 
hear or care? At last the answer came: “I have 
surely seen the afflictions of my people in Egypt, 
and have heard their cry; for I know their sorrows, 
and am come down to deliver them.” “And the 
Lord went before them by day in a pillar of 
cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a 
pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and 
night.” A portion of the way home, sometimes long 
stretches of it, must be covered by night marches. 
But at last those pilgrims of the night and of the 
wilderness sing their song of triumph by the sea: 
“Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in 
power; Thou, in Thy mercy, hast led forth the 
people which Thou hast redeemed.” The Mag- 


176 THE Royayty oF Jesus. 


nificat of Mary echoes this song of Moses, God’s 
care and vindication of His own. “He that is 
mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is 
His name. His mercy is on them that fear Him 
from generation unto generation.” That glorious 
multitude beside the sea of glass, once pilgrims 
of the night, having come up through great tribu- 
lation, sound out their jubilant notes of triumph 
in this song of Moses: “Great and marvelous are 
Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true 
are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints.” 

And they sang “the song of the Lamb.” We 
have seen that the song of Moses, that which gave 
to his life its purpose, direction, and music, was 
the supremacy of moral law. Now the song of 
the Lamb, that which gave to our Lord’s life its 
power, its blessedness and music, was the grace of 
self-sacrificing love. ‘The law was given by Moses, 
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” It 
was the mission of Moses to show that the world 
is united to the throne of God, and human society 
is held together by the majesty of moral law. It 
was the mission of Jesus Christ to show that a 
world, lost in sin and misery, can be restored to 
God and to holiness, through love’s great sacrifice. 
It was the purpose of His life, the song of the 
Lamb, to reveal the grace and truth of redeeming 


Sonc oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 177 


love. “God so loved the world that He gave His 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on 
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 
“The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
many.” 

Some truths are too large for utterance in 
human speech; their deep meaning can only be 
suggested in pictures or flashed in symbols. The 
wondrous love of God for the race, His atoning 
love and mercy, are such large truths. Thus the 
Lamb, typical of so much in the old Jewish worship, 
suggests the spotlessness of the Son of man, His 
gentleness and grace, and His redemptive mission. 
“He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,’ declares 
the prophet. “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sin of the world,” exclaims the Baptist, 
and, in so doing, voices the deepest hope of Israel. 
Human redemption is not wrought out through 
moral discipline, but through sorrow, agony, and 
death. “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible 
things, as silver and gold, but with the precious 
blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish 
and without spot.” “Worthy is the Lamb that 
was slain, to receive power and honor and glory 


and blessing.” 
I2 


178 Tue Royatty oF JEsus. 


Holiness is never self-attained, but received 
through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. “These 
are they which have washed their robes, and made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb.” “Unto 
Him that hath loved us and washed us from our 
sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings 
and priests unto God and His Father, be glory and 
dominion.” 

The great truth lying in the heart of this ex- 
pression, the song of the Lamb, is this: that some 
day the sorrow and pain and mystery of sacrifice 
will issue forth in joy and music. There is that 
in our common life which will help us to rise to 
the truth. Once upon a time, so the story runs, a 
king commanded one of his subjects, a skillful 
workman, to cast for him a bell whose music should 
be perfect as its tone rang out over the waters. 
Time after time the workman cast the bell, using 
the most precious metals, only to fail in securing 
the right tone. At last it was revealed to him 
that if he would mingle the blood of a pure young 
girl with the metal, the tone would be perfect. 
Do you read the parable? It is the touch of sacri- 
fice that makes the music perfect. Some one’s toil 
or sacrifice has paid the price of every step of 
human progress. Think of the saints, the patriots, 


Sone oF MosEs AND ‘THE LAMB. 179 


the martyrs, the pioneers, the inventors, the stu- 
dents, into whose labors we have entered, through 
whose broken lives we have been enriched. True, 
our modern civilization, while it has its songs of 
glory and power, has also its song of the Lamb, its 
tribute of grateful recognition of the long line of 
martyrs who have made its present possible. In 
the home we hear this song of the Lamb even more 
distinctly, and behold sacrifice turning into music 
and higher joy. Many a mother lives a scant and 
narrow life that the child of promise may be edu- 
cated and trained for higher service. Many a father 
bows-under growing burdens, like an Atlas under 
the world, that the family may be held together, 
and that the aged and invalid may not suffer. And 
yet these lives are not desolate; they find a joy in 
sacrifice ; they sing the song of the Lamb. 

In the old Jewish worship, when the fire touched 
the sacrifice upon the altar, at the flaming point 
the trumpets began to blow. This is profoundly true 
in human experience. Paradoxical as it seems, the 
rarest joy of life is that which sometimes starts 
out of the fire of sacrifice; at the very point of 
pain, the song of the Lamb begins. Those who 
shrink away from this in selfish calculation, miss 
life’s richest fruition, and lose what they seek to 


180 THE RoYALty oF JESUS. 


save. The spiritual interpretation of life must be 
the true one; no other has sufficient scope and 
horizon. At times, faith almost staggers under 
the mystery that falls on the world and upon in- 
dividual lives,—the mystery of sin, with its long 
tentacles reaching out and involving innocent lives 
in sorrow and anguish; the mystery of pain; the 
mystery of defeat; the failures of one’s noblest 
plans; life’s unfulfilled purposes; its folded or 
broken wings; its large ventures of love and sacri- 
fice, with such scant return. But, even here, love is 
never wholly desolate; in deepest sacrifice it finds a 
hidden joy, and begins its song. This is prophetic, 
the pencil of light that heralds the coming dawn. 
Possibly the suffering and sacrifice of the individual 
may yet work for the benefit of all mankind, and 
help promote the full divine harmony of the world, 
as separate instruments pour their streams of 
melody into the grand chorus, not lost, but fulfilled 
in it. Life is given for large use and investment; 
its sublimest victory is not that of self-assertion, 
but that of the cross, sacrifice for great ends. 
This, then, is the song of Moses and of the 
Lamb: the supremacy of moral law in the world, 
and the redemptive order of human life. The fact 


Sonc oF MosEs AND THE LAMB. 181 


that these songs mingle and make perfect music, 
points to a wondrous truth. The rose-window of 
the cathedral can be analyzed into a network of 
mathematical lines; the thundering notes of the 
organ, or the delicate ones of the violin, can be 
analyzed into the mathematics of vibration ; in other 
words, the precision of mathematical law is fulfilled 
and made glorious in music. As Plato put it, beauty 
is the splendor of truth. They say there is a point 
in space where all the discordant noises of earth 
meet in a musical note. Well, there beside the 
crystal sea, before the throne of God, all the voices 
and experiences of human history meet and mingle 
in perfect music, in the song of Moses and of the 
Lamb. 


“Ten thousand times ten thousand, 
In sparkling raiment bright, 

The armies of the ransomed host 
Throng up the steeps_of light. 


?T is finished, all is finished, 
Their fight with death and sin; 

Fling open wide the golden gates 
And let the victors in. 


What rush of hallelujahs 
Fills all the earth and sky! 
What ringing of a thousand harps 
Bespeaks the triumph nigh! 


182 THE Royatty oF JESsus. 


O day, for which Creation 
And all its tribes were made! 

O joy, for all the former woes 
A thousand-fold repaid.” 


“And they sang the song of Moses, the servant 
of God, and the song of the Lamb.” 


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